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© 2017

SURAJ LAKSHMINARASIMHAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED “”: IDENTITIES AND IDEOLOGIES IN INDIAN

FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY

A Thesis Presented to

The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts in History

Suraj Lakshminarasimhan

August 2017 COOKING “INDIA”: IDENTITIES AND IDEOLOGIES IN INDIAN COOKBOOKS

FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY

Suraj Lakshminarasimhan

Thesis

Approved: Accepted:

______Dr. Martin Wainwright Dr. Chand Miha Faculty Advisor Dean of the College

______Dr. Stephen Harp Dr. Chand Midha Faculty Reader Interim Dean of the Graduate School

______Dr. Martin Wainwright Date Department Chair

ii ABSTRACT

This paper traces the history of Indian cookbooks from the nineteenth century to the present, explaining how texts and food culture act as a method of identification.

This paper attempts to illustrate how cookbooks demonstrate discourses of and nationalism as well as postcolonial identity construction, revealing how cookbooks both codify and contradict tradition and modernity. This study begins by analyzing cookbooks produced by British writers in India and at home, showing how authors represented Indian as both an antithesis to European fare, yet also as an aspect of British identity. British cookbook authors in the subcontinent sought to organize, simplify, or “improve” , while cookbooks produced in Great

Britain understood the cuisine of the as the cuisine of the nation. From there, this paper examines cookbooks and food discourse by Indian nationalists, noting how they called for a return to traditional Indian food as well as adapting “modern cooking” to suit norms of domesticity. The analysis moves to Indian cookbooks produced after independence explaining how they continued to define identity through food. Rather than a singular Indian identity produced as a result of Indian independence, cookbooks produced after 1947 demonstrate various interpretations of Indian identity by Indian authors, all seeking to define India and its food based on their preconceptions and interpretations. This study concludes with the abundance of cookbooks since economic liberalization focusing on the tension between tradition and modernity as a parallel to

India’s identity contest in present politics.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….……………………1

II. CODIFYING IMPERIALISM: COOKBOOKS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF BRITISH IDENTITY...... ……………………...7 III. NATIONS, INCORPORATION, AND REDEFINITION: COOKBOOKS BY VICTORIAN WOMEN AND INDIAN NATIONALISTS…………………….21 IV. IDEOLOGIES AFTER “THE END OF INDIAN HISTORY”: INDIAN COOKBOOKS AFTER INDEPENDENCE 1947-1990………………………...36 V. LIBERALIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE TENSION OF TRADITION AND MODERNITY: COOKBOOKS FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT……...66 VI. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….…89 END NOTES……………………………………………………………………………91

BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………105

iv CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The from the nineteenth century to the present day offers historians many different eras of study. While many scholars focus on , noting the impact of European presence, others highlight as a refutation of the West. Along with studies in postcolonialism, comparative history, and subaltern studies, scholars have done their best to determine the identities and ideologies of . But how did contemporary people articulate their own identity in relation to the ? How did Anglo-Indians (British officers and administrators living in India), Victorian women, Indian nationalists, and voices after

Indian independence interpret “India”? To comprehend the multitude of voices involved in self-identification and defining “otherness,” cookbooks and food serve as effective lenses for understanding culture and society. Although developing out of social history, largely owes its origin to the cultural turn, its multidisciplinary nature indebted to anthropology and cultural studies as well as history. Cookbooks reflect how their authors understood society and culture as well as individual identity; their works expose the formation of self in the context of cultural interchange.1

Thus, this paper traces the history of Indian cookbooks by Anglo-Indian, Western, and Indian writers from the mid nineteenth century to the present, explaining how food texts and food culture act as a method of defining the Indian nation. Cookbooks are more

1 than a combination of ; they are cultural documents in which authors imprint their identity and ideology. British and Anglo-Indian authors used their cookbooks to depict

India in a way they might understand it, often encoding an imperial agenda in the process. To counter Western assumptions, Indian cookbook writers used cookbooks to articulate “the real India,” an identity based on their terms. While Britons and Indians offered cookbooks as their interpretation of the subcontinent, often reaching vastly different interpretations, it would be false to say there was no exchange or cultural borrowing between European and Indian cuisine. The fact that in 2001, foreign secretary

Robin Cook declared masala (an English dish modeled after Indian cuisine) a “British ”2 and that Indians frequently tea3 and serve various dishes attests to two-way acculturation flowering from by imperial contact.4

Nevertheless, cookbooks represent methods of self-identification for the author as well as their specific interpretation of India based on ideology.

Additionally, this paper examines how cookbooks both codify and contradict tradition and modernity. Cookbooks often claim to possess knowledge of traditional cooking, yet the decision to both publish and purchase a cookbook is an inherently modern enterprise, breaking away from oral tradition and culinary education from family members. Caste, class, and gender receive special attention when applicable, as the publication of cookbooks is inherently a process of inclusion and exclusion; while the pages of cookbooks celebrate some facets of Indian society, others fade over time.

Cookbook authors often come from the middle or upper class and in turn write for a middle to upper class audience, demonstrating certain political agendas while ignoring or overlooking the food cultures of the impoverished or minority groups. Cookbook authors

2 tried to understand India and its cuisine through the books they wrote, resulting in vastly different explanations and interpretations of food, people, and nation from the nineteenth century to the present day.

While the production of cookbooks has increased exponentially throughout the late twentieth century, the study of Indian cookbooks, especially those produced after

Indian independence, remains overlooked except for Arjun Appadurai’s “How to Make a

National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” written in 1988. He argues that

India lacks a national cuisine due to the prominence of regional and Hindu doctrine regarding the production and consumption of food. Food served as a communication of hierarchy between castes and a basis for Ayurvedic moral axioms, but these gastronomic issues did not affect culinary issues; the person that prepared permitted mattered more than how it was prepared.5 Appadurai views cookbooks produced by the Indian middle class as the method of determining a national cuisine. Uma

Narayan’s “ Cultures: Incorporation, Identity, and Indian Food” in Dislocating

Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism (1997) discusses the role of food in identity formation, focusing on this process in both colonial and postcolonial

India. However, she does not cite or reference any cookbooks, integral not only for understanding the food people ate in the nineteenth and twentieth, but for understanding the relationship between food, identity, and interpretation of India. This paper attempts to explain this process, how cookbook authors from the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere understood and presented Indian cuisine, simultaneously articulating their own identities and ideologies through the pages of cookbooks.

3 The historiography of Indian food and cuisine includes broad overviews of the subcontinent, most notably Indira Chakravarty’s Saga of Indian Food: A Historical and

Cultural Survey (1972), R.S. Khare’s Hindu Hearth and Home (1976) and K.T. Achaya’s

Indian Food: A Historical Companion (1994) and A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food

(1998). Chakravarty’s work traces the development of Indian cuisine throughout the history of the Indian subcontinent, but like many works of Indian history, it follows an

Indian nationalist interpretation of history and presents India’s culinary development as

“ending” with independence in 1947. Khare’s examines India’s food ways through anthropology, while Achaya’s meticulous survey adds a historical dimension to all facets of Indian . These works discuss the history of food in the Indian subcontinent, explaining what was eaten and how cuisine changed over time, but do not reference the importance of cookbooks for defining culinary norms for Anglo-Indian colonialists or Indian nationalists. Even though the majority of the Indian population relied on oral tradition to pass down culinary knowledge, cookbook publication demonstrated an active attempt to define Indian cuisine and nation. Lizzie Collingham’s

Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (2006) as well as Colleen Taylor Sen’s Food

Culture in India (2004), : A Global History (2009), and Feasts and Fasts (2015) offer more recent overviews of Indian food history, moving past “the end of Indian history” in 1947 and examining the emergence of the industry and cuisine throughout the Indian diaspora. As with the previous works, Collingham and Sen devote their study to Indian food and food culture rather than cookbooks and their representations of Indian identity.

4 David Burton’s The Raj at Table (1993) and Susan Zlotnick’s Domesticating

Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian (1996) serve as important works for the study of culinary norms in the and the British nation. Both authors cite cookbooks, with Burton illustrating the general dining habits of the British

Raj, while Zlotnick critically analyzes Victorian cookbooks, claiming that the inclusion of Indian cuisine in British cookbooks represents incorporation and subordination of “the other,” correlating imperialism with norms of domesticity. Nupur Chaudhuri and Mary

A. Procinda examine the relationship between British memsahibs (wives of British officers and administrators) and their Indian servants in their respective articles

“Memsahibs and their Servants in Nineteenth-Century India” (1994) and “Feeding the

Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Discourse” (2003), demonstrating that daily relations with “the other” caused women to adopt a new concept of domesticity and become active participants the process of empire building. Jayanta

Sengupta’ “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial

Bengal” (2009) and Rachel Berger’s “Between Digestion and Desire: Genealogies of

Food in Nationalist ” (2013) focus on cookbooks and food texts produced by a growing Indian middle class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, noting how cookbook production in Bengali and allowed Indians to articulate conceptions of nation, modernity, and domesticity. Uma Narayan, Tulasi Srinivas, and Parama Roy deal with the development of Indian food and cuisine with an emphasis on diaspora and globalization, ideas effectively synthesized in Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South (2012), edited by Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas.

5 Defining a national cuisine is not a new process, as Anglo-Indians, Victorian women, Indian nationalists, and authors throughout the Indian diaspora defined cuisine and identity through their cookbooks since the nineteenth century. Various iterations of

Indian cooking reveal numerous representations of national character, presenting “India” in a way the author could understand based on lived experience. Cookbooks reveal individual interpretations of the Indian nation, what it is and what it should be. As a rising power in , Indian national identity is a vital issue for politics within the subcontinent as well as international diplomacy. Relations with , position on regulations, and governing a diverse population of over a billion people all hinge on India’s national identity, what it chooses to embrace and ignore, to include and exclude. Cookbooks accentuate the definition of national identity, thus serving as critical documents for understanding India’s past, present, and future.

6 CHAPTER II

CODIFYING IMPERIALISM: COOKBOOKS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF

BRITISH IDENTITY

“I say ‘chief’ advisedly, for there can be no doubt that modern improvements in our cuisine, and modern good , have assisted in a measure in elbowing off the once delectable plats of Indian origin; and that the best curry in the world would never be permitted to appear at a petit-diner composed by a good disciple of the new régime”6 -Wyvern, Culinary Jottings for Madras (1885)

The production of printed recipes began almost simultaneously with the invention of the printing press, yet until the mid-nineteenth century, handwritten manuscript recipes and cookbooks remained the more popular method of distributing culinary information from generation to generation. A handwritten served as a method of self-education in the domestic sphere, most often written by women for women, and because of the distance between generations, provided a sense of intimacy between mothers, grandmothers and daughters.7 Elite women in British society, such as ,

Maria Eliza Rundell, , and , published cookbooks in Great

Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, breaking the traditional mold of disseminating culinary knowledge. Their books provided recipes as well as general household advice, aiming to help women succeed in the mastery over domestic affairs in

7 an age of rapid and universally progressing knowledge.8 However, the works by Dr.

Robert Riddell and Colonel Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (under the pen-name Wyvern) serve as the most influential British cookbooks written in the subcontinent as well as systematic attempts to define India based on Western norms. The cookbooks of Robert

Riddell and Wyvern represent attempts to articulate identity and imperial ideology based on their understanding of the contemporary political and social landscape

Riddell, a superintending army surgeon at the court of the Nizam of , first published his Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book in 1841, a book subsequently reprinted throughout the late nineteenth century, hoping it would serve as a work of general utility throughout India.9 He claims that he wrote his receipts as clearly as possible, not so Anglo-Indians could understand it easily, but to make communicating with Indian servants as effective as possible.10 Riddell presents English words with

Anglicized Hindi translation, allowing for easier communication between memsahibs and

Indian servants. The hands-off approach to domestic work allowed Anglo-Indian women

(as well as British women that could afford a maid at home) to devote attention to other pursuits, namely pursuing women’s education and suffrage in the name of female liberation and the ideology of the .11 Cooks proved to be among the most expensive servants, and Riddell notes that a typical cook was “[…] usually a Native

Christian of the lowest caste of Hindoos from Madras or the Coast.”12 Orthodox

Brahmins, historically employed as cooks due to high caste status and therefore the ability to prepare food for any member of society, avoided consuming or handling in the name of religious purity, as food served as the essential caste distinction well into the twentieth century.13 Indian from lower castes replaced as cooks

8 for Britons in India, as the latter could not prepare the highly carnivorous diet of the

British Raj, breaking traditional axioms of Indian cookery.

The book also contains advice for animal husbandry as well as methods for preparing food, implicitly contrasting British cultural identity with that of both and . Riddell guides those wishing to raise calves for to give them throughout life to properly fatten them, as Indian calves result in poor tasting veal.14

Because most Hindus did not eat , Indians raised cattle for producing and manure for fuel rather than for slaughter, resulting in meat Riddell did not consider up to

European standard. The fact that Riddell includes chapters regarding the preparation of beef and signifies the power of the British within the subcontinent, as East India

Company merchants and administrators would not eat beef and pork in the presence of

Indians when the was at its strength. Chapters devoted to raising

European livestock, cultivating familiar , and preparing distinctly parallel the rise of British power. British , animal husbandry, and imposition of on Indian cooks served as methods to understand, order, and “civilize” Indian space.

Riddell discusses Indian food in his chapter “Oriental Cookery,” immediately distancing the cuisine of Hindus and Muslims as cuisine of “the other.” He initially differentiates between Hindu and Muslim cuisine, explaining that “Hindoos” delight in and various , , and of vegetables, while Muslims prepare their food more substantially, albeit using meat nearly as indigestible as leather.15 His use of the word “curry” signifies a rather blunt and oversimplified understanding based on British norms and expectations.16 Curry, an English word likely derived from the

9 Portuguese word caril or caree, in turn derived from karil or kari in Tamil, signifies a broad generalization of Indian cuisine, ignoring individual categorizations and regional styles of cooking for a misused pan-Indian term.17 Moreover, his inclusion of various , pulaos and biriyanis (fragrant and spiced rice with meat, often with nuts and raisins), (meat slowly cooked with ), and (meat or vegetables braised in a of or cream), represents developed under

Mughal rule based on Persian, Turkic, and various Indian influences. Despite the obvious inclusion and exclusion of various cultures, the cuisine of the Mughal court presented in Riddell’s cookbook only represents a subsection of Indian cuisine.

Additionally, there is only one recipe for , a or pulse that makes up much of the Indian diet, throughout the entire book. Similar to the accumulation of knowledge of

India’s languages and history, the Orientalist project described by Edward Said and

Bernard Cohn, the British used their knowledge of the Mughals to consolidate their rule.18 To eat like the Mughal dynasty was to act like the Mughal dynasty, legitimizing

British presence and demonstrating mastery through consumption. Riddell’s cookbook offers European and Indian recipes as well as domestic advice for Anglo-Indian readers, allowing for mastery of not only the domestic sphere, but the subcontinent as a whole.

More than a simple food text, Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book defines India as a land vastly different from Great Britain, but one that the British could organize and understand as simply as the contents of his book.

Wyvern’s Culinary Jottings for Madras, first published in 1869 and republished in 1885, also seeks to define Indian food and space but includes a shift in tone. Wyvern’s work was published after what is variously known as the Sepoy Mutiny, Rebellion, or

10 Revolution in 1857, an event that led to outright rule of the British Raj rather than the de facto rule of the British . The event destroyed previously established cultural bridges, beginning a shift in policy from attempts to “civilize Indians” based on educational reform to a society predicated on exclusion based on presumed racial inferiority.19 Exemplifying this, Wyvern states that all Indians, personalized through constant reference to his cook Ramasamy, are “intensely conservative and sworn foes to innovations,” diverging from Riddell’s consideration that only particular Indian servants were untrustworthy because of low caste.20 Furthermore, the cook, being a child in

Wyvern’s opinion, required constant supervision from the memsahib, lest he fall back on

“ancient barbarisms of his forefathers.”21 Wyvern’s cookbook is explicitly a work of identification, as he aims to explain the superiority of the new order of consumption, dispelling domestic assumptions about British lifestyle in India.22 In his attempt to display the modern sensibilities of Anglo-Indians, he includes recipes for several French dishes, providing instruction for the preparation of a proper consommé, a clear , and including recipes for various cassoulets, slow cooked French casseroles, and , a . Of , Wyvern also includes preparations for English fare, including a sauce for poultry that would undoubtedly provide a nice for a working husband.23 Rather than preparing the food of previous generations, Wyvern’s cookbook defines Anglo-Indian cuisine as the pinnacle of modernity and civility, paralleling the rhetoric of the British Empire.

As with Riddell, Wyvern devotes time to the curries and food of India, but exemplifies a higher degree of British input on Indian cuisine, epitomizing increased

British control over India. He provides a recipe for , a dish composed of boiled

11 rice, minced , hard-boiled eggs, , , pepper, , calling it a substantial

British and an effective method to use leftovers.24 This dish owes its origins to khichiri or khichdi, which K.T. Achaya defines as a vegetarian dish composed of rice and moong dal.25 The addition of meat and eggs to an Indian dish exemplifies a degree of hybridity, yet consumption of kedgeree incorporates an aspect of Indian culture to British norms, as eating large quantities of meat in ostentatious served as a legitimization of British authority.26 However, the molten curries, according to Wyvern, “lost caste” in

British formal settings; it was faux pas to serve Indian food at dinnertime or special occasions, yet curry remained a popular dish for lunch or at clubs, hotels and private dinners due to nostalgia.27 Curry had to improve based on modern sensibilities, according to Wyvern, leading to the suggestions of beef suet and to Indian dishes, resulting in entirely new dishes fit for civility while violating the religious prescriptions of most of India’s population. Wyvern’s cookbook concludes with a portrayal of Indian , describing them as dirty and substandard and requiring an English range cooker to be a proper culinary establishment,28 serving as a visual image justifying the need for

British governance in the India. While Riddell presents Indian cuisine through the limited vision of the Mughals, Wyvern interprets Indian food as having lost its way and requiring improvement. Culinary Jottings for Madras identifies India as a colony firmly under control of the British Empire; India required civility and modernity, which would only occur through British improvement and guidance.

The works of Riddell and Wyvern are the most well-known from the Indian subcontinent, but because of norms of domesticity, women dominated the production of cookbooks. Women such as Flora Anna Steel, Grace Gardiner, Angela Spry, and Carrie

12 Cutcrewe produced cookbooks that offered recipes as well as general advice for housekeeping and maintaining a household in India. Indian space needed to be

“civilized” according to British norms and , and British women, because of their moral superiority, were the true agents of civility, maintaining racial homogeneity and superiority in order to maintain empire’s strength and legacy.29 The proper administration of even a small household needed both the brain and heart of an educated women, as the home was the base unit of civilization where British families learned their duties.30 As mothers and educators of the empire, British women had the responsibility to domesticate India, making it fit for proper European sensibilities. Cookbooks produced by Anglo-Indian women provided instruction in maintaining a modern household, as proper governance of the household ensured the proper rule, dignity, and prestige of the Indian empire.31

Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, first published in 1879 by an anonymous author, aims to improve cookery in India, explaining that the main stumbling block to preparing dishes was “[…] the impossibility of relying on the memory of [Indian] cooks to retain the numerous ingredients and complicated processes of European cuisine of which they have no record.”32 The book confines itself strictly to the preparation of European dishes, continuing Wyvern’s emphasis to defend Anglo-Indian life and consumption as the epitome of civilization. The author considers Indian cooks entirely unskillful in

European styles of cooking, which required different culinary techniques and often possessed a completely different profile than regional Indian cuisines, and further argued that English cookbooks were useless for life in the subcontinent.33 As with

Wyvern’s cookbook, Dainty Dishes includes many French and Italian dishes, particularly

13 and , to go along with English chops, meat pies, and to demonstrate the refined nature of Anglo-Indian dining. Meat, per the author, played too important a part in the British diet, as a gentleman at the time could consume up to 74 kilograms of meat in a year,34 leading to greater inclusion to vegetables, eggs, and macaroni dishes. The ability to produce a varied menu with the most fashionable food in large quantities was a key skill of the memsahib, as the ability to throw a good dinner party was a key component for career advancement within the colonial administration.35

The second edition of Dainty Dishes, published in 1881, explains that the author added chapters devoted to curry and pulao due to “the suggestion of numerous friends,” indicating a demand for inclusion of Indian food while simultaneously revealing an attempt by the author to ignore Indian food in the Anglo-Indian culinary lexicon.36 These chapters contain eleven curries and four pulaos, and the recipes instruct the reader on the specific amount of to use for each dish, while anything else in the book similar to an Indian dish merely calls for the use of . There are two Indian fish recipes, one called “Fish Curry” and another labeled “Another Fish Curry,” even though the second recipe uses different spices, such as , , and , to indicate a more Bengali iteration and completely different dish. The book includes a recipe for a made with veal, but rather than grilling the meat, the author advises the reader to season the meat with curry powder before pan-. While Riddell sought to organize Indian cuisine and Wyvern aimed to improve it through additional European dishes, Dainty Dishes attempts to ignore Indian cuisine, forcing Indian cooks to prepare only proper food suited for the modern and civilized British Raj.

14 Continuing the trend to minimize Indian cuisine after 1857 and promote domesticity within the empire, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, first published in 1888 by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner and subsequently republished into the early twentieth century, dedicates itself to the English girl with the task of being a house mother in “our Eastern empire.”37 As with Riddell and Wyvern, Steel and

Gardiner consider Indian servants untrustworthy, requiring the constant guidance of the memsahib. They proclaim, “The Indian servant is a child in everything save age, and should be treated as a child; that is to say, kindly, but with the greatest firmness.”38 A few days of absence or neglect by the mistress would cause the servants to fall back on bad habits; it was imperative that the memsahib enforce her will through the threat of fines or making the servants swallow castor oil.39 Steel and Gardiner stress domesticity based on racialized imperial rhetoric, advising their readers, “Never do work which an ordinarily good servant ought to be able to do. If the one you have will not or cannot do it, get another who can.”40 The best oil for household machinery, according to Steel and

Gardiner, was human sympathy, a woman’s touch, to maintain economy, efficiency, and peace in the domestic sphere, the base unit for the vitality of British rule in India.

The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook views Indians, Indian food, and

Indian culture with utmost contempt, as Steel and Gardiner view the customs of their servants as foolish or barbaric due to the author’s ignorance of various Hindu traditions.

The authors bemoan the fact that on many occasions,

“[…] with the curious perversity that characterizes so many Indian customs, one often sees three table servants waiting on two people, while the whole cleansing work of a large, dusty, dilapidated Indian bungalow is left to one man, who is also scavenger, dog man, poultry man, and general scapegoat.”41

15

Rather than general laziness or foolishness by the table servants, this is an example of the caste system, as undesirable and impure tasks such as cleaning and leatherwork were the responsibility of “untouchables” or Dalits, considered the lowest strata of Indian society.

Steel and Gardiner do mention caste during a brief discussion of dining customs, but do not relate it to the division of labor. Steel and Gardiner declare the cow as the most misunderstood animal on the Indian subcontinent, remarking that the servant charged with taking care of the cows, the gowwala, fed (clarified butter used in Hindu ritual), , spices, and oil to a pregnant cow, believing that without these items the cow would die.42 considers the cow a sacred animal due to the importance of milk in the Indian diet and the necessity of milk for the growth and development of children. Thus, this incident represents a typical aspect of Hindu tradition, an offering hoping for good health of the cow, but Steel and Gardiner view it as barbaric, atypical to

British norms.

Indian Housekeeper and Cook includes a chapter devoted to advice for the Indian cook written in a pejorative tone, urging the cook to maintain a clean cooking space to ensure the comfort and health of the home. The authors claim that through their instruction, the Indian cook would not only be “cleverer than his fathers” but could become a real cordon bleu; the Indian servant civilized through contact with British domesticity.43 “Vegetables,” Steel and Gardiner explain, “are not to be boiled in the soup, or all together in one saucepan, as is too often done by Indian cooks,” discounting

Indian norms of cooking as inferior and unfit for Anglo-Indian tables.44 Moreover, they asserted that a good cook used animal in cooking and seldom used ghee, completely disregarding the role of ghee as a “pure” food in Hindu cooking.45 Continuing the trend

16 toward more dainty dishes to embody modern trends, most of the recipes in Indian

Housekeeper and Cook are English, French, and Italian, with the authors noting that a

French dictionary proved necessary to produce high class dinner entrees.46 However,

Steel and Gardiner include eight “native dishes” due to reader request, noting that the native cooks “invariably know how make them fairly well.”47 In similar fashion to

Dainty Dishes, reader request dictated the inclusion of Indian cuisine in Anglo-Indian cookbooks, indicating both a desire for Indian food as well as separation between the intentions of cookbook authors and the attitudes of readers. Nevertheless, Steel and

Gardiner’s Indian Housekeeper and Cook represents the evolution of imperial attitudes toward India and the subcontinent. Their cookbook is an attempt to disparage and

“other” Indian servants and Indian food in the name of civility, domesticity, and promoting the legitimacy of the British Raj.

Carrie Cutcrewe’s Memsahib’s Book of Cookery, first published in 1894 and often credited to Angela C. Spry, continues the trends presented in Dainty Dishes and Indian

Housekeeper and Cook, reducing the presence of Indian cuisine while seeking to impart

British domesticity on Indian space. The book stresses the importance of economy and efficiency in running a household due to the reduced value of the rupee by the end of the nineteenth century, a point of contention between colonial rhetoric and Indian nationalists. The logic of colonialism dictated that economic struggles in colonies indicated inherent backwardness, while Indian nationalists asserted that British colonial rule itself stagnated the Indian economy. Although less derogatory than Steel and

Gardiner, Cutcrewe emphasizes the need for “civilization” in the Indian subcontinent, stating that Indian kitchens would stand to benefit from an Eagle brand range cooker, as it

17 would render every memsahib independent from the village baker, as Cutcrewe believed typhoid and cholera could be traced back to bazaar bread.48 With regard to Indian cuisine, she explains that cooks prepare and serve curry once a day, but with such poor results that the memsahib herself should make or instruct the cook to make a proper curry.49 As with other Anglo-Indian cookbooks published after 1857, Memsahib’s Book of Cookery includes more French recipes and desserts to exemplify civility and modernity, while various perpetuate gender norms of daintiness.

Cutcrewe’s work attempts to accentuate the elegance of Anglo-Indian consumption and life governing the subcontinent, the British in India personifying haughty imperial rhetoric.

Unlike Dainty Dishes and Indian Housekeeper and Cook, Memsahib’s Book of

Cookery does not include a separate chapter for Indian or native dishes, but they are in fact present throughout the book. Cutcrewe presents two recipes for fowl pulao, the first with fewer spices and more suitable for those unfamiliar with Mughlai cuisine, a recipe for mutton kebab, a and dhal soup (a British understanding of Indian sambhar),

Indian pickles made with and , and instructions for proper preparation of ghee rather than dismissing it as an inferior cooking fat. There are more dishes in this work, particularly lunch sandwiches, that call for curry power, corroborating with

Wyvern’s explanation that spicier foods retained their popularity at informal meals.

Finally, Cutcrewe offers a recipe made of , but calls it “Soojee (Suji)

Pastry,” borrowing the Hindi word for semolina.50 Just as English words entered the lexicon of Indian languages due to colonial encounter, Indian languages affected the day to day vocabulary of Anglo-Indians. The fear of “going native” or “becoming country

18 cousins” proved to be a major concern for Anglo-Indians returning to Great Britain, as

Cutcrewe offers recommendations to purchase new clothes, furniture, , cutlery, and art upon returning home.51 Despite the rhetoric of incorruptible British civility, there was apprehension regarding the impact of daily interaction with Indians. This fear of corruption legitimized the need to consume large quantities of meat and fine European cuisine and distance oneself from anything Indian in the minds of Anglo-Indians. While

Cutcrewe’s work attempted to minimize the prevalence of Indian cuisine and Indian influence on British norms, it reveals that it was impossible to completely eliminate the influence of the subcontinent.

Riddell, Wyvern, Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe composed cookbooks as interpretations of the India and its relation to British identity. All of these cookbooks represented a facet of the imperial project, with varying attitudes regarding the nature of the Indian subcontinent and its people. Paralleling the efforts of British Orientalists,

Riddell sought to simplify, organize, and understand Indian cuisine, space, and resources.

After the events of 1857, colonial attitudes changed, as Wyvern, Dainty Dishes, Steel,

Gardiner, and Cutcrewe endeavored to make India and its cuisine more suitable to axioms of empire, either through civilizing or improving India’s food and people or simply excluding them as inherently inferior. However, rather than completely discarding Indian food in favor of European cuisine, Indian food remained in the pages of cookbooks, along with new Anglo-Indian dishes and additions of European ingredients to “improve” the cuisine of India. Mulligatawny soup, an Anglo-Indian soup of meat and vegetables deriving from Tamil words translated as “pepper water” and kedgeree became popular dishes among Anglo-Indians. Furthermore, one cookbook, titled The Indian Cookery

19 Book published in 1880 by another anonymous writer, provides over one hundred distinctly Indian recipes, noting differences between dopiazas, , kormas, pulaos, and vindaloos rather than generalized Indian dishes, noting that some dishes are more suited to European taste than others. The adoption of curry throughout the British diaspora further attests to a lack of absolute dismissal of Indian food. It would be an overstatement to say that the British “conquered curry,” as adoption of food of the

“other” was a series of exchanges between the British Empire and the Indian population.

Acculturation occurred between the British and Indians when it came to food, but the food texts produced by Anglo-Indian authors reveal their conceptualization of the subcontinent. Colonial cookbooks represent imperialist interpretations of Indian identity;

India was a colony under British control that needed to be understood, organized, and improved through the marginalization of Indian barbarity based on British standards of civility and modernity.

20

CHAPTER III

NATIONS, INCORPORATION, AND REDEFINITION: COOKBOOKS BY

VICTORIAN WOMEN AND INDIAN NATIONALISTS

“With these we have intermingled many foreign ones which we know to be excellent of their kind, and which now so far belong to our national cookery, as to be met with commonly at all refined modern tables.”52 -Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery in all its Branches (1858)

“Indian Cookery is regarded by a foreigner as an indivisible whole and it is true to some extent. Cookery practised in the different parts of India e. g. , Orissa, the United Provinces, Madras, Bombay or the is the same in the sense that one method is followed.”53 -I.R. Dey, Indian Cookery and (19--)

Just as imperial rhetoric dictated the production of cookbooks to establish British norms of modernity, civility, and domesticity in the British Raj, cookbook production by

Victorian women codified these themes in Great Britain. Cookbooks published in the

Victorian era aimed to help middle and upper class women achieve the feminine ideal, in which a woman’s spirit permeated the domestic establishment through the happiness, comfort, and well-being of the family.54 While the rhetoric of empire touted that the

British embodied the peak of civilization, some of the British elite, such as Eliza Acton, feared that their cuisine remained far inferior to less advanced nations.55 The need to preserve and advance British civility incorporated women and maintenance of the

21 domestic sphere into the mission of empire. The cookbooks produced by women in

Great Britain and India represent the confluence of British domesticity and the expansion of empire, a process that Susan Zlotnick calls “the domestication of imperialism.”56

There was certainly an attempt to incorporate the various identities and cultures of the

British Empire in the pages of cookbooks, but to say that Victorian cookbooks subordinated Indian cuisine, as Zlotnick argues, is an overstatement. Rather, the inclusion of chapters on Indian cuisine in Victorian cookbooks demonstrate a new but specifically British identity, a vision where nation and empire represented one entity rather than separate from one another.

As with cookbooks produced by Anglo-Indian authors, Victorian cookbooks simplified Indian cuisine to a collection of curry dishes. The inclusion of curry in British cookbooks did not begin in the nineteenth century, as Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery made and Easy written in 1747 includes a curry recipe containing fish and rice, while only using and for .57 However, the saw greater inclusion of curry recipes due to greater familiarity with India, as Eliza

Acton and Isabella Beeton made it a point to include Indian cuisine in their cookbooks.

Written for English housewives rather than Anglo-Indian memsahibs, Eliza Acton’s

Modern Cookery in All its Branches, published in 1845 and republished for an American audience in 1858, stressed economy in the , listing ingredients and providing cooking times to assist wives in small households.58 Acton proclaims that England, beyond all other countries, was rich not only in the varied and abundant produce of its soil, but in its commerce; the empire allowed access to all the necessities or the luxury its people could demand.59 British cuisine was no longer limited to the produce and

22 livestock of the British Isle; the resources from seven continents were available and, according to Acton, must be utilized to fully embrace modern cooking.

Along with traditional English dishes, Acton’s work intermingles foreign dishes known to be excellent in kind and commonly found at all refined modern tables, emphasized through a chapter devoted entirely to curry.60 Rather than ignoring, condescending, or seeking to improve India’s cuisine, Acton views “oriental curries” superior to English versions due to the use of fresh, native ingredients.61 Moreover, she argues that cooks in the East compound and vary this class of dishes “with infinite ingenuity, blending in them very agreeably many of different flavor, until the highest degree of piquancy and savor is produced,” a far cry from the condescension by

Anglo-Indian cookbook authors about the lack of skill among Indian cooks.62 Acton criticizes English versions of curry for containing too much and cayenne, as cooks preparing curry and curry powder believed that the spicier the dish was, the greater the authenticity, resulting in the stereotype of Indian food as unbearably hot that persists into present day.63 To produce a proper curry and close the culinary gap between Great

Britain and “less advanced nations,” Acton calls for the reader, in the more rational and liberal spirit of , to profit from the superior information and experience of others and employ “a high caste chemist” to make curry powder.64 While Anglo-Indian cookbooks articulated modernity through the production and consumption of European food at the expense of “lower caste” curries, Acton’s cookbook interprets modern British cuisine through the inclusion of Indian food. India, according to Acton, was a case study of British superiority, a component of British cuisine and civility.

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As with Acton’s Modern Cookery in all its Branches, Isabella Beeton’s Book of

Household Management attempts to define modern cooking, demystifying food preparation and helping the Victorian wife and mother run a household with great efficiency. Unlike Acton, whose most important goal was to improve the standing of

British cooking, Beeton stresses economy in the kitchen. Rather than employing a servant to grind spices for curry power, Beeton instructs the reader to compose curry power with coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne, , , , and and keep it on hand, but ultimately concludes that a curry powder “purchased at any respectable shop is, generally speaking, far superior, and, taking all things into consideration, very frequently more economical.”65 For Beeton, curry served as an flavorful way to use leftover meat, as thrift of the housewife part of the Victorian ideal of domesticity, and thus presents several versions of curry, ranging from a beef version made with , curried chicken and curried veal requiring minced apple and flour66 to a more authentic recipe combining chicken and along with cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom for spice.67 Beeton includes other Indian recipes favored by Anglo-

Indians, such as mulligatawny soup, mango , and an Indian pickle while subsequently creating a fowl pulao with bacon and hardboiled eggs, an effective way to consume leftover but a departure from a standard Indian dish. A mainstay in

Victorian Britain for its recipes as well as medicinal and general household advice, many women traveling within the empire packed Beeton’s cookbook to bring English domesticity to the colonies.68 Beeton’s Book of Household Management interprets Indian as useful tool to maintain the economy of the household, paralleling the importance of India in maintaining the international superiority of the British Empire.

24 Susan Zlotnick argues that the inclusion of Indian recipes in Victorian cookbooks and Indian cookbooks produced by women represent an attempt to domesticate imperialism, as the incorporation of foreign food into would reduce the power of the Orient. Citing Modern Domestic Cookery, published in 1851 by an unknown author, she asserts that curry became a completely naturalized English food by the middle of the nineteenth century.69 She also references Eliza Acton’s chapter on curries and potted , noting that Acton did not place curry dishes in the chapter labeled “Foreign and Jewish Cookery,” indicating that curry had been incorporated by the

British culinary lexicon.70 Curry certainly became more familiar to the British diaspora throughout the nineteenth century, but not due to subordination by domesticity in the manner Zlotnick describes. Rather, the inclusion of curry in Victorian cookbooks exemplifies what David Cannadine describes as “Ornamentalism.” Instead of a strict binary between nation and colony, civilized and Oriental other, the British viewed the totality of the British Empire as a series of ornaments composing their own identity.71

The empire and all its holdings were as much a part of British national conceptions of identity as the nation was for imperial identity. Some Britons and Anglo-Indians, as a display of cultural or racial superiority, chose to reject Indian food.72 Others viewed

Indian food pejoratively, such as Steel’s belief that most Indian recipes were inordinately greasy or sweet.73 Nevertheless, the incorporation of Indian dishes in Victorian cookbooks demonstrates India as a facet of British identity, an ornament in the British

Empire. The relationship between Britain and India during colonial rule was far from harmonious and British imperial rhetoric stressed the physical and intellectual weakness of Indians based on racial norms. Nevertheless, Victorian cookbooks acknowledge that

25 Indian food, therefore Indian identity, was a part of British identity necessitating presence in the food texts of Victorian women, Anglo-Indian women, as well as Riddell and

Wyvern.

Just as Acton and Beeton’s cookbooks encoded modern cuisine and advice for maintaining domesticity in the home for readers in Great Britain, The Englishwoman in

India, written in 1864 by an anonymous author, offers useful advice on the wants of a lady on a modest budget in the subcontinent.74 Similar to the works by Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe, The Englishwoman in India aimed to assist women arriving in India, as many memsahibs had no idea how to cook themselves; they arrived in India knowing what British food should taste like, but no real notion of how this was achieved.75

However, The Englishwoman in written specifically for an English audience with little to no idea what to expect in India rather than a cookbook with practical advice for women “already on the ground.” The author explains that India is an “equally overpraised and over abused country,” and insists that the native cook puts an English one to shame due to the former’s repertoire of dishes and the ability to create delicious dishes in such a primitive kitchen.76 The memsahib should make sure to offer and curry with their Indian servants, as they often fail to take care of their own meals.77

Nonetheless, the household required a firm, but not wicked, hand to supervise the servants, as they were prone to slack off or lie to escape work.

As with Wyvern, Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe, The Englishwoman in India follows the post Sepoy Mutiny trend by including more Italian and French dishes combined with an emphasis on making proper English puddings. Like the Anglo-Indian

Cookbooks and Acton’s Modern Cookery in all its Branches, the author devotes a special

26 chapter to “curries,” but Indian food is simplified to recipes for curry powder and chutneys, coupled with a few scattered dishes with Indian influence, such as mulligatawny soup and a recipe for “oyster pulao.” Borrowing from Riddell, the author deems meat and eggs produced in the subcontinent inferior in size and goodness and recommends larding the meat in numerous recipes to improve taste.78 Dal makes one major appearance in the book, but the author uses it as an ingredient for washing powder rather than cuisine.79 As with Anglo-Indian cookbooks and other Victorian cookbooks,

The Englishwoman in India recognizes India as a colony under British control, therefore a facet of British identity. Despite the rhetoric of the empire as a “civilizing” enterprise and the belief that the increased presence British women would domesticate foreign space, this cookbook acknowledges that life in India differs from life at home and the ideals of imperial rhetoric do not always match reality. Rather than a mystical land of the imagination, “India” was a reality for many British women, requiring advice and different methods of living to adapt to Indian life.

Anglo-Indian cookbooks authors like Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe sought to minimize Indian cuisine and influence and present Anglo-Indian consumption as the peak of civility, but when British officers retired to England and left the land for which they worked so hard, they found that they missed the Indian subcontinent and its food.80

When the Raj were in India, they lived their lives in the best facsimiles of English customs and traditions they could devise, but demanded the piquant curries and chutneys upon their return to the in contrast to the “fear of corruption” through contact with the Orient.81 Those unfamiliar, curious, or nostalgic about the “empire in the East” attended the British Empire Exhibition 1924-1925, an exhibition so successful that 27

27 million people journeyed from one end of the empire to another to experience the showcase.82 Edward Palmer, a restauranteur and founder of E.P. Veerasawmy

(alternatively spelled ) & Co. Indian Food Specialists, served as catering advisor for the Indian pavilion and produced a cookbook in 1936 to illustrate the complicated art of Indian cuisine and benefit country and empire.83 Palmer, the great- grandson of the Hyderabadi Muslim princess Fyze Baksh and an English lieutenant general, had an interest in producing authentic Indian food and insisted that it was possible to make a proper curry to rival the very best made in India, as long as one used his “Nizam” brand of spices.84 As with Beeton, Palmer views curry as a delicious and economical method to use leftover meat and vegetables. Capitalizing on demand for

Indian cuisine and nostalgia for the empire, Palmer defines Indian cuisine based on

Western familiarity, commodifying the British Raj.

Palmer’s Indian Cookery works to break assumptions and previous mistakes presented by British and Anglo-Indian cookbook authors in order to portray Indian cuisine more accurately. First, Palmer explains,

“Indian cookery is not the cookery of a single nationality or of a recent civilization. It dates back centuries and is a combination of the cookery of many nationalities. The result is a complicated art dating back to the remote ages and dependent on , health, customs, taste, and climatic conditions.”85 Rather than the subsection of Mughlai cuisine most familiar to Western readers, Palmer indicates a knowledge of regional differences in Indian food ways. Underscoring this, he includes not only English terms and their Hindi translations, but Tamil translations as well, aiming to appeal to returning Anglo-Indians that lived in while also refuting the notion of a singular Indian language. Contradicting Acton’s advice regarding fresh ingredients being the key to proper cooking, Palmer claims that “those who speak

28 of fresh ingredients know absolutely nothing beyond what their native Indian servant as told them,” citing his experience catering for the imperial exhibition and cooking for

Indian princes as proof that curry powder, if it is the right curry powder, leads to delicious results.86 , apples, and animal fat should not be used in Indian dishes, refuting the advice and recipes from Beeton and Wyvern, and pulaos and biriyanis, rather than “unfit for European taste,” deserved the foremost place in the cuisine of the Orient.87

Palmer justifies the ubiquity of yogurt and dal throughout Indian cuisine by noting that all castes and classes ate these foods, demonstrating some familiarity with the Indian caste system as well as Hindu beliefs of and purity.88 Moreover, he urges

Westerners to utilize in their cooking for their nutritive and economic value.89

Seeking to improve Indian cookery throughout the British Empire, Palmer’s Indian

Cooking corrects previous mistakes in Indian and endeavors to produce a more intricate encapsulation of Indian cuisine.

Despite Palmer’s efforts to define authentic Indian cuisine, he establishes himself as a citizen of the empire and adapts Indian cooking to suit British norms. Indian

Cooking only contains dishes that Westerners would have some familiarity with, dishes those nostalgic for the cuisine of the British Raj would be willing to purchase and consume. Additionally, Palmer instructs readers to use white flour rather than flour to make , fried savory pastries stuffed with either minced meat or vegetables, and includes recipes for curries made with rabbit, beef and dal, curry, and eel, adapting Indian flavors to British ingredients to make new yet more familiar dishes. Palmer uses the language and rhetoric of empire to differentiate between West and East, referring to Europeans as “European races” and asserting that due to greater

29 quality of meat and vegetables available in Western countries, the Western housewife has a great advantage over her Eastern sister, even in the creation of Indian dishes.90 Though

Palmer depicts a more complete representation of Indian cuisine, his Indian Cookery views the Indian subcontinent as a component of the British Empire, one that could be commodified and sold to curious or nostalgic audiences.

Just as British cookbook authors used Indian food as a method to define India, either as a colonial holding, a representation of barbarity, or an ornament in British identity, Indians used food and cookbooks to articulate their own varied identities and interpretations of “India.” Despite the narrative of Indian nationalism as a united front overthrowing the oppressive British Empire, the Indian population reacted to the British in different ways depending on their background and social standing. The adoption of

Western food customs by Indian princes, rulers of states not under direct control of the

British Raj, exemplifies this point. A state banquet of an Indian prince was a hybrid mélange of Hindu, Mughal, and English culinary traditions, as the adoption of certain cuisines and dishes to supplement preexisting traditions, called “the paraphernalia of eating” by Angma Jhala, served as a reflection of power.91 Indian princes looked to maintain their wealth within the British Raj, while the British sought to empower an

Indian aristocracy to engineer society in a familiar way, resulting in the British supporting princes as puppet rulers.92 Due to their alliance (and reliance) on the British, the rulers of the princely states adopted many Western customs, most notably and

European dining etiquette. Meals now had courses rather than all dishes presented at one time, a European style menu, dressing for dinner, and eating meals at a table.93 Royal families played an important role in preserving the cosmopolitan nature of Indian cuisine,

30 as the food of maharajas litters the pages of cookbooks in the present day.94 However,

Indian princes represented a one portion of India’s colonial population and food culture, as nationalists used food and cookbooks as a method to reject British rule and articulate their own conception of Indian identity.

Modern Indian nationalism began in the latter decades of the nineteenth century as a result of a growing middle class and intellectual base, arguing for greater inclusion in governance and administration as well as challenging the imperial logic of Indian racial inferiority. As nationalist movements developed into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they defined themselves as the antithesis of the British Empire, most famously through Mohandas Gandhi’s embrace of , handspun Indian cloth, and using Hindu history and symbols to defy imperialism. Food served as another battleground for defining national identity, as nationalists urged the population to return to a traditional diet.95 Food emerged as category of analysis and discussion amid broader movements to rationalize and modernize middle-class domestic space; it was made scientific according to the logic of home economics and the new concern over family health.96 To codify what this entailed, middle class and North Indians began printing cookbooks as an articulation of identity, defining their cuisine in contradiction with European fare.97

These cookbooks not only included regional dishes, but stated that an ideal modern housewife, grihini, should be skilled in the cuisine of the past and present, ranging from

Brahmin dishes of to meat in the style of the Mughals.98

The change in food culture can be seen as a transformative component of a broader project to articulate, identify, and delineate the nationalist ideals of Indian middle class life.99 Bengali cookbooks, such as the Pak-Pranali, Amish o Niramish Ahar, and

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Hindi publications, such as J.A. ’s Paka-Vijnana and Yashoda Devi’s Pakshastras established identity as well as the importance of female domesticity. Nationalists argued that the lack of culinary skill among Indian women resulted in a loss of identity and

Indian power.100 Nationalist rhetoric often emphasized rescuing women (either as an embodiment of the “nation” or in the literal sense), from the depravity of “the other;”

Indian nationalist cookbooks sought to reclaim Indian cooking, therefore Indian women, from British and Anglo-Indian corruption. Cookbooks published by Indian authors ensured that “their” women would have the culinary skill to promote a happy marriage and the strength of the nation, the task of the modern Indian woman. To combat anxieties over aggressive methods toward modernization, cookbooks invoked tradition and ancient wisdom, particularly regarding health edicts of , the fusion of tradition and modernity producing a distinctly Indian identity in refutation of the British Empire.101

The production of cookbooks by Indians represented identity politics; Indians could and should cook their own cuisine on their own terms, just as India must be left for Indians to govern.

Although published after the first attempts to produce Bengali cookbooks, I.R

Dey’s Indian Cookery and Confectionery (dates of initial publication range from 1900 to

1942) reiterates nationalist discourse and represents an interpretation of India and its food as the opposite of European norms. Dey explains that her cookbook signifies an attempt to properly depict Indian cuisine, as she asserts,

“The present system of cooking in many provinces of India has lost its old reputation, having fallen into the hands of some who do not regard cooking as a fine art and of illiterate and stupid professional cooks of different provinces who having failed in every sphere of life resort to cooking.”102

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In her opinion, contemporary cooks followed stereotyped and defective methods in the preparation of every food, likely referring to attempts to make “curry” based on European expectations, as Dey later criticizes the use of pre-made curry powder.103 Dey insists that

Indian cooking is an indivisible whole, echoing nationalist rhetoric, yet believes that

Bengal is the most advanced in cuisine, displaying contradictions to an assumed united national character.104 As with earlier published Bengali cookbooks, Dey’s work conceptualizes Indian cuisine and India as the opposite of British norms.

British and Anglo-Indian cookbook authors advocated the use of metal cookware as a display of modernity and wealth, yet Dey calls for a return to earthenware pots as used by Indians throughout history.105 She does not discuss “curries” in a separate chapter, but refers to dishes based on their regional names in chapters devoted to meat and fish. Moreover, she includes individual chapters for rice and dal, a shift away from

European focus on Mughal dishes and a more accurate depiction of typical Indian cuisine, as even today and dal make up more than seventy percent of all calories and protein consumed.106 Dey informs her reader that rice is nutritionally superior when husked by indigenous implements rather than industrial mills, placing traditional methods of food production in higher esteem compared to “civilized” methods established by the

British Empire.107 Yet, paralleling Anglo-Indian cookbooks inclusion of Indian food,

Dey does not exclude British cuisine entirely. Her recipe for khichiri includes eggs rather than the traditional vegetarian version, and she also includes omelets, poached eggs,

“English curry with ,” and a dish with rabbit or hare in her cookbook. Moreover, the cookbook displays acculturation and appropriation of European food, a mutual exchange of culinary fashions. However, Dey adapts the European style dishes into a

33 cookbook based on an entirely different interpretation; Dey’s cookbook abides by the development of Bengali domesticity. The proper Bengali housewife was to cook based on tradition as well as new fashions, and the ability to prepare European cuisine along with popular Indian dishes embodied the ideal grihini. Moreover, Indian Cookery and

Confectionery demonstrates a specifically Bengali interpretation of Indian cuisine, as many items call for (a warming northern of cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom as the main components along with the selective addition of peppercorns, , mace, and ) and , ingredients used regularly in

Northern India but not as commonly in southern regions. Dey’s cookbook represents a nationalist attempt to redefine India, albeit a Bengali articulation of Indian identity that neglects regional differences and attitudes toward Indian nationalism. Rather than merely an ornament of British identity, Indian nationalists used cookbooks and food to represent

India as the opposite of British cuisine.

While Bengalis published cookbooks as an articulation of identity, the fact that much of India’s population did not publish cookbooks reveals just as much about Indian identity. Despite the assurances by cookbook authors that their work represents traditional, authentic ways of cooking, the production of a printed cookbook involves breaking away from manuscript and oral tradition. In India, culinary knowledge passed between women from generation to generation; a new wife sent to live in her husband’s home learned how to cook from her mother-in-law and other female in-laws. This traditional method of teaching and learning to cook persisted well into the twentieth century. It is only with the breakup of geographically centered families that young housewives (and men wishing to cook) desired cookbooks.108 Although not necessarily a

34 conscious decision, the lack of cookbook production for much of India’s history reveals identity articulation just as much as codifying identities through cookbooks. India’s identity was up for interpretation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as

Indian nationalists, Hindu nationalists, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, and the British all differed on what India meant and what India should mean. The wide range of interpretations did not dissipate with independence in 1947. On the contrary, “India” was up for debate more than ever with its emergence as a nation state.

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CHAPTER IV

IDEOLOGIES AFTER “THE END OF INDIAN HISTORY”: INDIAN COOKBOOKS

AFTER INDEPENDENCE 1947-1990

“In most instances, the Indian cook will add an ingredient or two beyond what is required in a dish, without deviating from the classic flavor, simply to give it his or her own personal stamp. This is commonly referred to in Indian as Hath ki bat, meaning “one’s touch.”109 -Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking (1980)

In Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Gyanendra Pandey explains that because of an overwhelmingly nationalist historiography, India’s history “ends” with independence in 1947.110 The historical narrative includes development in the ancient world, a glorious past, rupture caused by invasions and colonial rule, and the culmination of Indian history in achieving independence. Yet, it is precisely the period after independence, Indian history’s supposed epilogue, that proves vital for present day political issues in India. Religious tension and violence within the nation, rivalry and war with Pakistan, poverty and access to resources, and India’s status in the international community are all issues beyond the nationalist struggle for independence. Attempts at non-alignment during the Cold War further muddle India’s identity internationally. With uncertainty regarding the identity of the newly independent, men and women throughout the Indian diaspora used food texts to envision their mataram (motherland), what India

36 was and what India should be. Cookbook production increased dramatically during the twentieth century, resulting in numerous representations of Indian cuisine and in turn many interpretations of national identity. Authors such as Srimathi Meenakshi Ammal,

Santha Rau, , Pranati Sengupta, Julie Sahni, Sudha Koul, Ismail

Merchant, Yamuni Devi, and even the Indian government itself attempted to understand and define post-independence Indian cuisine through the pages of cookbooks, thus offering their own articulations of the independent nation.

As India struggled to define itself beyond the nationalist struggle against colonialism, Srimathi Meenakshi Ammal published her cookbook, Samaithu Par

(translated to “Cook and See”) in 1951, emerging at a time when there was a dearth of good cookery books to suit modern times.111 Indian women began recognizing the

“uneconomics” of maintaining maids and servants, and took to self-cooking to decrease household expenditure in the uncertain postcolonial Indian economy.112 Breaking from the oral tradition of passing down culinary knowledge through generations as well as the belief among Indian girls that it was beneath their dignity to enter the kitchen, Samaithu

Par made South Indian recipes available for families throughout the subcontinent.113

Unlike Anglo-Indian and Bengali cookbooks, Ammal’s work not only ignores Mughlai dishes stereotyped as a complete representation of Indian food, it does not include meat dishes of any kind, instead focusing solely on rustic vegetarian dishes composed of rice, grains, dal, and vegetables. Moreover, Ammal’s cookbook was originally published in

Tamil rather than Hindi, the latter officially declared the language of the nation a year earlier, demonstrating the power of regional languages and customs and signifying a disconnect between the rhetoric of a united India and the reality of a multiethnic, multi-

37 confessional, multicultural, and multilingual society. When the book was finally translated in 1968, it was translated to English, as it was a more commonly shared language among the Indian population despite the fact that Parliament initially planned to end the use of English for official purposes in 1965, signifying a key legacy of British colonialism. Thus, the book uses Tamil terms to describe food items, such as karunaikizhangu for yams, and utilizes specifically South Indian ingredients and dining customs. For example, Ammal provides instructions for correctly preparing coffee rather than tea, as is South Indian custom. Additionally, many recipes call for as a agent, not widely used in North India, and is replaced with , a gum extracted from rhizomes or taproot of ferula herbs. Samaithu Par uses Indian measurements, such as palam (equivalent to 35 grams) and ollack (about a quarter of a liter) and does not define specifically Indian ingredients, such as , a sweetener made from palm sap often used instead of sugar, indicating that Ammal wrote for a specifically Indian audience that did not require definition of common food terms.

Samaithu Par represents an attempt to define Indian after independence, revealing a disconnect between the nationalist rhetoric of a united India and offering a specifically

South Indian interpretation on what India was and should be.

Just as Ammal’s Samaithu Par attempted to articulate identity based on lived experience in postcolonial South India, Savitri Chowdhary’s Indian Cooking, published in 1954 as part of the Andre Deutsch cookbook series in the , illustrates an attempt to demystify India to an English audience as while serving as a navigation of the immigrant experience. Before the popularity of published cookbooks, manuscript cookbooks and handwritten recipes allowed women to tell their life stories as well as

38 their interpretation of community, society, and culture.114 For many immigrants, experiencing a complete upheaval in their lives and often isolated from family and former communities, a recipe or cookbook a degree of familiarity and intimacy, while creating recipes involved adapting to a new environment. Additionally, Uma Narayan argues that immigrant women, particularly women of Indian origin, play a significant and peculiar role in maintaining Indian identity, particularly in Great Britain.115 Thus,

Chowdhary’s cookbook serves as a case study of the immigrant experience to the United

Kingdom, demonstrating how she adapted her cultural norms to her new setting as well as her interpretation of India and its cuisine.

Chowdhary was born in Multan, in present day Pakistan, immigrating to the

United Kingdom in 1932 after a four-year separation from her husband. Although she struggled at times to adjust to new way of life as a doctor’s wife in a small English town, she negotiated her traditional identity with her new surroundings, cutting her waist length hair and wearing Western clothes during the day while wearing saris (long multi-colored gowns made of silk) for evening occasions, cooking Indian food at home and socializing with the middle class Indian community.116 Chowdhary moved from Punjab (part of which became Pakistan after the Partition of 1947) to the United Kingdom, and her book self-admittedly focuses on Punjabi dishes, yet another limited interpretation of Indian cuisine.117 She includes , an Indian made from , as a “basic material” for proper Indian cooking, ignoring the fact that it is mostly used in North India rather than ubiquitous throughout the subcontinent. She also provides a method to make garam masala, a Northern spice mixture, yet instructs readers to use a coffee grinder as a more efficient way to break down spices, adapting tradition based on culture and technology.

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Although limited in its presentation, Chowdhary’s cookbook works to break

Western assumptions of Indian food and culture. Chowdhary informs readers that, despite popular belief, Indian dishes are not inherently spicy; one easily could create a flavorful dish without using based on her cooking experience, as her father never cared for overly spiced food.118 Moreover, one could leave garlic and onions out of recipes as well, for many Hindus do not eat them because of their pungent flavors and because they may harbor life through sprouting plants. While describing dining customs in India, she explains that Indians eat “with well washed hands” aiming to move away from stereotypes of Indians as dirty or uncivilized perpetuated during colonial rule and exemplified through Wyvern’s description of Indian kitchens.119 Contradicting the culinary advice of Victorians and Anglo-Indians, Chowdhary’s “” calls for garam masala and turmeric rather than prepackaged curry powder. At the same time, she adapts Indian cuisine and customs based on English cultural norms as well, illustrating acculturation and her interpretation of the immigrant experience. Her recipe for pulao states that it makes a great rather than a main dish, and she provides instructions for making pulao with cod and . There is a dish that calls for meat rolled in a pastry as well as dishes devoted to tea time. Chowdhary’s cookbook reflects her identity as an Indian immigrant, fusing Indian tradition with her current environment, as well as an attempt to break assumptions of Indian cuisine and character.

In his article “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary

India,” anthropologist Arjun Appadurai argues that because of the strength of regional culinary styles and greater focus on food preparation rather than specific dishes in Hindu tradition, India “lacks a national cuisine.” He calls upon India’s middle class to define a

40 national Indian cuisine through cookbook publication in the late twentieth and twenty- first centuries. Not only did various cookbooks published since the nineteenth century attempt to define Indian food and nation, but the state itself engaged in cookbook publication to define Indian cuisine, thus defining its own identity after independence.

Indian Cuisine, published in 1960 by India’s Department of Tourism, serves as a national definition of Indian cuisine, an articulation of identity celebrating culinary tradition and cosmopolitan influence from India’s diverse population. Rather than ignoring regional differences in cuisine, the government’s cookbook remarks that “[…] it is unlikely that any comparable area in the world has such a variety of dishes.”120 The

Department of Tourism insists that not all Indian dishes are inherently hot and that hands are carefully washed before each , echoing Chowdhary’s efforts to refute Western stereotypes regarding Indian food and people. North Indian food, the cuisine most often served at government banquets, , and hotels, possessed quality and richness reflecting the resplendent glory of the Mughal Empire, illustrating a celebration of Indian history before British colonial rule.121 The attempt to establish the intricacy and splendor, the legitimacy of Indian cuisine, ironically limits the Department of Tourism’s

Indian Cuisine, as the cookbook mainly focuses on Mughlai dishes in the same manner as colonial cookbooks. Likely attempting to present food familiar and popular among tourists, presenting this small subsection of Indian cuisine undercuts the stated goal of celebrating India’s diversity in its dishes.

Interestingly, the government cites , Bombay (), Calcutta (), and Madras () as the centers for the main styles of Indian cooking. Even though much of India was and still is rural, Indian Cooking establishes urban India as the integral

41 component defining India’s culinary development and identity, paralleling criticism by subaltern historians that urban, middle and upper class nationalists of Hindu descent overwhelmingly dominate India’s history writing. Though Indian Cooking notes that there are not many typically Indian dishes but rather broad techniques, seeming to underscore Appadurai’s point, the fact that the government itself published a cookbook represents an attempt to define a national cuisine and articulate India’s identity after independence. The Department of Tourism’s cookbook attempts to legitimize Indian cuisine and nation on the international stage after colonial rule, celebrating India’s glorious past while also looking to urban India as the vanguard of India’s future.

Just as the Indian Department of Tourism defined the Indian nation through cookbook production, the Indian Council of Medical Research published Common Indian

Recipes and their Nutritive Value in 1964, seeking to connect traditional Indian cuisine with nutritional science. While the Indian Cooking stressed the grandeur and legitimacy of Indian food, the Indian Council of Medical Research aims to display the modernity of the newly independent nation. Unlike early Hindi food texts and cookbooks produced after this work throughout the late twentieth and twenty-first century, Common Indian

Recipes and their Nutritive Value does not mention Ayurveda as a form of ancient wisdom in any way; the work links modern science such as calorie count and percentage of to the health benefits of food items. The Council of Medical Research insists that their work provides valuable information for preparing several common dishes along with their nutritive value, particularly helpful to housewives and persons in charge of catering establishments.122 Continuing the new standard of domesticity established through Indian nationalist cookbooks, the ideal grihini must not only be able to create a

42 wide variety of cuisine, but should know the relative nutritional value of ingredients and common dishes.

Most of the recipes listed in the book are vegetarian, of which a majority are desserts and sweetmeats to be all inclusive and prove useful for all Indians. Though

Colleen Taylor Sen explains that seventy percent of the Indian population eats meat at some point in their lives, many Indians are de facto vegetarians simply because meat is expensive rather than due to religious taboos.123 With regard to the prevalence of Indian sweets, Achaya states that sweets, being fried vegetarian dishes, managed to cut across religion, class, and caste.124 The Council of Medical Research recognized sweets as common ground among a diverse Indian population and included numerous recipes in order to reach a greater portion of the Indian population. Understanding modern nutritional science in food preparation represented an important facet of postcolonial domesticity as well as an example of Indian modernity. Far from the colonial stereotypes of backwardness and barbarity, Common Indian Recipes and their

Nutritive Value interprets India as understanding and incorporating modern science into daily life.

Looking to define Indian identity and resolve common misconceptions to an

American audience, Santha Rama Rau’s Recipes: The Cooking of India, part of Time-

Life’s “Foods of the World” series and published in 1969, presents Indian cuisine in a cookbook devoted for middle class American readers, aiming to add a sense of adventure to their dining routine. Rama Rau the daughter of Benegal Rama Rau, a member of the

Indian Civil Service and the longest tenured governor of the , was a writer most famous for her book Home to India, her memoir “By Any Other Name,” and

43 adapting E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India to theater; her works offered Americans an insider’s view of Indian culture, tradition, and history to counter serious misconceptions in the public mind.125 Through her cookbook, Rau’s intends to help readers go far beyond the rudiments of a simple curry and prepare dishes that are most practical for

American cooks.126 As with Chowdhary’s cookbook, the author assures readers that

Indian spices are neither odd tasting nor fiercely hot and calls for no more than three chilies per dish.127 Unlike the cookbooks by Chowdhary and Dey, however, this book includes recipes from all over India, ranging from and from South India to from , a city on the West coast colonized by the Portuguese. Rama Rau had a history of indicting scholars for Orientalizing and simplifying Indian cuisine and culture for Western consumption. Although Time-Life merely wanted an Indian cookbook published for revenue sales, Rama Rau composed Recipes: The Cooking of India to help

American readers understand India as a cosmopolitan subject in its own right, not just a sovereign player on the world stage.128

In The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau, Antoinette Burton notes that though cookbook authorship was not completely to Rama Rau’s liking as compared to her previous works, she pursued the project to identify India as a dynamic and diverse subcontinent while striving to rescue India from the condescension and “othering” of

Cold War commentators.129 As with the Indian Department of Tourism, she considered

Indian cities, not villages, the greater representation of the authentic Indian experience, owing in large part to her desire to challenge the stereotype of India as a land of famine.130 Although Indian cooking appeared sporadically in American publications like

Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, and , headlines about

44 Indian famine, a stereotype of Indian poverty while simultaneously a drastic concern throughout colonial rule and after independence, overshadowed celebrations of Indian cuisine.131 The series editors, initially hiring Rama Rau to write a cookbook to combine

Indian and , requested that the author include a chapter on Pakistan, reflecting contemporary global politics of two nations on the Indian subcontinent. Rama

Rau vehemently responded that Pakistan was already included in the cookbook, as

Pakistan was a part of India for so many centuries that it would be impossible to discuss

North Indian and Mughlai cuisine without including Pakistan by name or implication.132

Rama Rau fervently rejected the “Two Nation Theory” proposed by the Muslim League during the struggle for Indian (and eventually Pakistani) independence; her view of India contained Pakistan and its Muslim population as part of India’s cosmopolitan society.

Her interpretation of Indian identity celebrated India’s complexity and diversity, an articulation not accepted by the editors of the cookbook series.

Almost certainly due to disconnect between the cookbook author and series editors, the American definition of India through this cookbook is that of the “other” rather than Rama Rau’s cosmopolitan ideal. Rama Rau’s role in what the cookbook ultimately became was quite limited, and this reflects throughout the cookbook through word and artistic choices that would have appalled the “author” of the cookbook. The book describes a , a deep skillet used extensively in Indian cooking (similar to a wok), as “an Oriental deep fryer.”133 The chapter headings include mock-Hindi script,

English words with a line above the letters, along with “Oriental” imagery. Against

Rama Rau’s wishes, the editors brought in a new author to write a chapter on Pakistan, reiterating Mughal style cooking along with support for the “Two Nation Theory.”

45

Unlike the United Kingdom, which had extensive contact with India through the empire and experienced greater immigration from the subcontinent, the had little experience with India. The fourth wave of immigration to the United States was just beginning by the early 1970s, and India’s friendly ties with the Soviet Union as a reaction to United States financial and military aid to Pakistan chilled diplomacy due to the strict

Cold War binary of “us and other.” Thus, despite Rama Rau’s effort to demystify India to her American audience, the United States’ conception of India demonstrated through the Time-Life cookbook was that of the unknown other.

While authors from the West used cookbooks to present their interpretations of

Indian identity, Indian cookbook authors responded, articulating their own interpretations of Indian cuisine and the subcontinent. Just as achieved celebrity, Madhur

Jaffrey to international fame through her cookbooks and television program teaching people how to cook Indian cuisine. She describes her first work, An Invitation to Indian

Cooking written in 1973, as “a maneuver of self-defense,” as she felt a sense of guilt that she could never recommend a good Indian restaurant to friends and acquaintances.134

This is not due to a lack of familiarity with Indian cuisine; on the contrary, she explains that there are no restaurants that provide the top quality food of Indian households.135

Indian restaurants displayed timidity when it came to cuisine, fearing the use of too much spice and providing a limited menu of generalized “curries” to appeal to American tastes.

With regard to the word “curry,” Jaffrey emphatically states, “To me the word ‘curry’ is as degrading to India’s great cuisine as the term ‘chop suey’ was to China’s.”136

Furthermore, she condemns the use of curry powder, as it oversimplifies and therefore destroys Indian cuisine; the constant use of curry powder makes all dishes taste alike

46 rather than celebrating their differences based on regional ingredients and blend of spices.137 Collecting various recipes from her mother and grandmother, the traditional method of distributing culinary knowledge, and assuring the reader that she cooked the dishes herself, Jaffrey aims to break culinary insularity, inviting audiences to cook and eat Indian cuisine.138

As with the cookbooks of Dey and Chowdhary, Jaffrey attempts to redefine

Indian cuisine for a Western audience, but presents a limited interpretation of Indian food. Jaffrey grew up in and Delhi, and admits that her recipes are limited to those regions rather than a systematic inclusion of all of India’s regional recipes.139

Likewise, her cookbook demonstrates acculturation and accommodation to her audience; she uses oil rather than mustard oil, oil, or ghee and presents a dish labeled

“Pork Chops à la Jaffrey,” which she describes as “[…] really my very own concoction and unlikely to be served in any Indian home other than mine.”140 Her recipe for khichiri

(spelled khitcherie) follows the Anglo-Indian preparation, she even refers to the dish as

“scrambled eggs, Indian style.”141 Like any other cookbook, Jaffrey’s involves a process of inclusion and exclusion based on background, upbringing, and purpose for writing.

Jaffrey grew up in a non-vegetarian upper class household with a cook providing their meals, meaning that her family had easier access to food and resources than other strata of the population. Thus, the fact that she briefly mentions parliamentary debates on cow slaughter in India almost as a humorous anecdote is troubling and a misunderstanding of

India’s political climate. Middle to upper class Hindus advocate protecting cows through law as a method of maintaining religious tradition, which has the explicit effect of denying food to non-Hindus, most notably India’s Muslim population that already has

47 greater difficulty accessing resources.142 Moreover, she concludes her book with a chapter on , betal leaf often combined with sugar or nuts that is eaten after a meal to aid digestion, with a story of how a delivery of paan to her radio program at United

Nations headquarters resulted in physical altercation. She remarks, “Then, like wild demons, we all leaped upon him snatched the paan, […] There was no excuse except that it was unpremeditated! That is what paan can do to Indians and Pakistanis!”143 While this incident between Indians and Pakistanis is rather benign, it makes light of the heated conflict between the two nations, as Partition of the countries in 1947 was one of the most horrific events in the twentieth century; the geographical divide brought displacement and death, rape and plunder, benefiting the few at the expense of the very many.144 Partition violence and religious tension sparked during the nationalist struggle boiled over after independence into four Indo-Pakistani wars, continued hostility, and the threat of future nuclear conflict. While attempting to produce a more authentic version of

India’s identity through its cuisine, Jaffrey’s interpretation is limited based on regional focus and social class.

Jaffrey published an expanded version of her cookbook titled Indian Cookery in

1982, in which she emphasizes cooking as a method of emulating the traditional methods of ancestors as well as the notion that India is “the melting pot of the East.” She begins this version with a childhood story, describing the various dishes her friends would bring to school based on their cultural norms and food restrictions. A friend of Jain faith brought pooras, a made of dal, a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh brought beef cooked with , while a Christian from share with sambhar.145 Jaffrey remembers delighting in all of these dishes, all of which were Indian, presenting a rosy

48 ideal of communal and confessional harmony throughout India. This ideal does not reflect the reality of India’s religious groups after 1947, as Hindu and Muslim communities suffered from violence during Partition, Muslims experienced what

Gyanendra Pandey calls “routine violence” through denied access to resources and economic opportunities, and formed their own separatist movements at the time of

Jaffrey’s writing. Jaffrey’s cookbooks presented her vision of what India was and what

India should be, a nation of various regions, , and cultures living harmoniously with one another with each adding to what it meant to be India. Certainly not every

Indian felt ill will towards those of another religion, but to gloss over the political realities of conflict and religious tension is to do further violence to those suffering from these issues. Jaffrey uses her cookbooks not only to define her own experience but to define India, a limited version based on regional focus and glossing over political realities.

While Jaffrey’s sought to be inclusive through Invitation to Indian Cooking and

Indian Cookery, celebrating the regional and religious differences of India and its cuisine,

Pranati Sengupta’s Art of Indian Cuisine serves as a work of exclusion, presenting a narrow definition of Indian food and nation and rendering India’s diversity invisible.

Published in 1974, Sengupta reveals that “This book is the result of many years spent away from India, in which I did my own cooking and entertaining without the assistance of cooks and servants.”146 As with previous cookbooks, Sengupta discusses the Indian dining customs such as sitting on the floor and eating with hands rather than utensils, claiming that because Indians like to mix their rice with curry and scoop it up with chappati (unleavened Indian ), it is more practical and more satisfying.147

49

Seeking to counteract stereotypes highlighted by colonial cookbooks, Sengupta explains that though Indian kitchens appear primitive, they are more suitable to the preparation of

Indian dishes.148 Publishing for a Western audience, Sengupta works to correct Western assumptions about Indian life and cuisine, offering a new but limited interpretation of

Indian identity after independence.

Sengupta’s articulation of Indian identity is a limited one, rendering Muslims,

Jains, Parsis (a Persian community that moved to Indian to escape religious persecution),

Sikhs, and other religious groups invisible from Indian cuisine despite their importance in shaping many culinary techniques and dishes. She describes Indian as a land of festivals and holidays, but follows with a discussion of harvest festivals and Hindu holidays such as Puja and without any mention of celebrations of other religions, such as

Eid-al Fitr in . She briefly notes that Indian vegetarians do not eat garlic or onions without any explanation regarding philosophical thought, influenced by Jain and Buddhist concepts of (), behind this food restriction. Sengupta includes recipe for vindaloo, a hot and sour dish traditionally made with pork (though it can be made with lamb or other meat) developed by Christians in Portuguese Goa, without any reference to its origin. Similarly, Mughlai dishes like biriyani and are co-opted as Indian cuisine without any deference paid to their Muslim origins. One Parsi dish makes an appearance, as Sengupta provides a recipe for making a “Parsi Omelette,” a European style dish rather than an original Parsi creation. Many of the dishes are made incorrectly or based on Western tastes and assumptions. For example, the author presents one recipe for dosa, a crepe made from rice and lentils made in South India, served with . While this is a popular dish in Kerala, a coastal southern state in India,

50

Sengupta refers to this dish as simply dosa rather than a specific regional iteration; a typical dosa is most often served as a vegetarian . Another dish called

“Qorma Chawal” is referred to as “hot curried rice,” despite the fact that korma refers to a technique with milk, yogurt, or cream, ingredients this recipe does not use.

Sengupta’s Art of Indian Cuisine aspires to define Indian cuisine and identity, but minimizes or co-opts India’s regional and religious differences to present a “pan-Indian” cuisine fraught with misconceptions and misunderstandings similar to colonial cookbooks. Pandey argues that the writing of history and propaganda aided the position of Hindu elite in society allows a fragment of the population to define itself as the

“mainstream culture; the culture of the majority is in fact a minority parading as a national entity.149 Sengupta’s work parallels and assists in this process, reducing India’s diversity and complexity and presenting a narrow definition of Indian cuisine and national identity.

Though much of the British Empire achieved independence shortly after World

War II, remained a British colony until the 1997. Thus, Sita Patel’s Easy

Indian Cook-Book published in Hong Kong in 1974 represents the legacy of the British

Empire as well as the presence of the Indian diaspora. In similar fashion to Ammal and

Sengupta, Patel learned to cook when there were no servants, as the household cooks and maids fled during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.150 The book is North Indian in scope due to her upbringing, but this is not a limitation according to Patel, as she claims,

“The diet of North India is probably the best balanced in the whole country from the nutritional point of view, as it contains plenty of wheat, meat, milk, vegetables, and fat.”151 Though she concedes that it is best to cook with ghee, she notes that modern

51 science recommends that oil, mustard oil, and corn oil are a more suitable cooking medium, following the push for modernity advocated by the Indian Council of

Medical Research.152 Patel’s cookbook displays influence from her new environment, as she instructs the reader to make a vegetable curry with Chinese and gives recipes for brussels sprouts, an ingredient that can be used but is uncommon in Indian cuisine. Some recipes sacrifice authenticity in the name of convenience for the reader, as she calls for chicken to be deep fried to make rather than grilled on a in a (clay ). Just as Savitiri Chowdhary’s cookbook served as an articulation and adaptation of Indian identity through migration to the United Kingdom, Patel’s Easy

Indian Cook-Book represents a navigation of Indian identity in Hong Kong, adapting to new surroundings and defining Indian identity to a foreign audience. Her cookbook illustrates the vestiges of British colonial rule as well as growing Indian influence throughout the world.

As with Jaffrey, executive and culinary instructor Julie Sahni offers cuisine as a uniting for India’s diverse population, stating in her 1980 publication of

Classic Indian Cooking that people of varied race, color, and religion are bound together in “Indian Culture.”153 Sahni asserts that each regional style is to be appreciated and holds a distinct place in the culinary world, noting religious and regional differences rather than ignoring them.154 Whereas Jaffrey labeled her work as a “maneuver of self- defense,” Sahni’s acts as a method of legitimizing India and its cuisine to the world.

During her introductory discussion of Indian spices, a common starting point among

Indian cookbooks, she mentions the importance of spices in Ayurvedic medicine, tying

Indian cuisine and the modern nation to the wisdom of an ancient civilization. Further

52 seeking to make the presence of Indian cooking known and celebrated on the world stage, she remarks in her chapter devoted to dal recipes,

“Glancing though cookbooks by well-known authors, I am constantly surprised and disappointed when I come to the section on . They mention German split soup, French , Egyptian , Mexican refried , Cuban black soup. They even talk about the and its use in Chinese cooking. But there is no mention of legumes in Indian cooking.”155 With thinly veiled anger, she declares, “Indians knew the versatility of legumes before many civilizations even heard of them.”156 Moreover, Sahni insists that India is the best at cooking rice and agrees with Jaffrey regarding the deliciousness of morel .

Her interpretation of India’s cuisine focuses on the Mughals; which she considers the most popular and refined regional style of cooking.157 This focus not only owes to her culinary training, but presents India’s most recognized, sophisticated, and ostentatious food to compare and compete with other celebrated global cuisines. Feeling that Indian cuisine was long ignored or misunderstood, Sahni aspires to legitimize Indian cuisine and improve India’s presence among conceptions of international nations.

In her attempt to legitimize Indian cuisine, to illustrate an identity of greatness proclaim India’s glory in a postcolonial era, Sahni concentrates on traditional, familiar

Mughlai cooking, though she does mention changes to India’s culinary landscape. She recognizes that Indian meals are more frequently served with appetizers rather than all courses being served at once due to India’s rising middle class adopting Western dining customs. Many Indians began substituting ghee for unsaturated cooking oils due to health concerns and took to shallow frying rather than deep frying, borrowing Western cooking techniques. Additionally, Sahni makes false or misleading claims about certain ingredients or culinary norms. She discusses the importance of paneer, claiming that it

53 serves as protein for Brahmins, Jains, and Buddhists.158 Yet, this ignores the that history of paneer is up for debate, as some argue it owes its origin to the Portuguese, lifting

Hindu taboos on milk curdling, while others attest to its Indian origin.159 In a recipe for ande ki kari (eggs cooked in a spice sauce), she claims that Indians take eggs very seriously, pampering them the same way they do meat and preparing and serving them with equal care.160 Egg dishes are a case study of European influence on Indian cuisine rather than traditional Indian fare. Furthermore, her excerpt regarding the treatment of eggs ignores debates regarding serving eggs to India’s poor due to vegetarian tradition of

India’s elite.161 Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking represents an attempt to legitimize

Indian cuisine; she hopes her cookbook places the Indian food on the same celebrated level French and in culinary canon, paralleling India’s desire to be recognized as a global power.

Sahni discusses the cuisine of South India, ignored in her previous book, in

Classic Vegetarian and Cooking, published in 1985. Vegetarianism, she explains,

“came naturally and effortlessly to someone living in India,” as the vegetarian meals

Sahni grew up with were always “tasty, wholesome, and downright satisfying.”162 Only upon moving to the West did Sahni become nonvegetarian, a similar experience for many

Indian immigrants and a shift away from Indian , a source of anxiety among devout

Hindus. Sahni’s states that her book adds variety and adventurous flavors to a Western vegetarian diet, adding that regardless of motives, “there is certainly a great deal from a that has existed for four thousand years.”163 Ancient Hindu Brahmins, she argues, recognized the importance of modern nutrition for thousands of centuries,

[…] guiding them to enjoy meals that not only taste good but automatically fulfill the

54 body’s nutritional requirements.”164 She praises the inventiveness and skill of Indian cooks, insisting that the women of are the most creative of all vegetarians.165 Vegetables, in the hands of skilled Indian cooks, cease to be dreaded accompaniments put on the plate due to necessity; if children in the West ate Indian spinach, there would be no need for Popeye.166 As with her previous book, Sahni aims to legitimize and demonstrate the expertise utility of Indian flavors in the modern world.

As with Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery, Sahni includes numerous personal anecdotes, the most prominent one recounting her sister’s wedding precession from North India to the south by train. Her story culminates with their arrival at a South Indian temple, witnessing the priests chanting hymns while stirring rice, breaking , and preparing for the wedding feast.167 Sahni’s cookbook is the first to explicitly address caste since colonial condemnation of low caste servants and Veerasawmy’s discussion on the prevalence of yogurt in Indian diet. Long considered a black mark on Indian society and a point of condemnation within the international community, cookbook authors simply ignored caste, possibly because it was not the focus of their book, but likely to avoid the negative connotations it elicits. Sahni’s mention of caste is brief and celebratory, as she is in awe of the Brahmin priests preparing the large amount of food, harkening back to the cooking methods of the ancient past. As with religious tension, caste is still an issue in the present, a focus of discrimination and outright violence.

Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking serves to promote and Indian tradition as well as allowing Sahni to preserve childhood memories growing up in an Indian vegetarian household. Sahni believes the world can learn from an ancient cuisine;

55 Westerners can add new techniques and flavors to their culinary repertoire, while Indians far from home can recapture childhood by recreating classic Indian cuisine.

Increased immigration from the subcontinent to the United States combined with the popularity and success of the cookbooks by Madhur Jaffrey and Julie Sahni resulted in a greater curiosity regarding Indian cuisine. To answer this call, Sudha Koul published

Curries Without Worries: An Introduction to Indian Cuisine in 1983, endeavoring to

“make some contribution toward satisfy growing curiosity of American housewives about

Indian cuisine.”168 She contends that even in the 1980s, most Americans had “[…] a vague impression of an entrée called curry containing mysterious ingredients and is too hot,” demonstrating the power of colonial stereotypes.169 Repeating Jaffrey’s condemnation of curry power, Koul informs the reader that using a single combination of spices was unthinkable, the equivalent of using the same blend of herbs for all Western dishes.170 Unlike Sengupta and Sahni, who concentrated on cuisine of the elite, Koul believes that the demand for Indian food overstepped the confines of clubs; people wanted to prepare day to day food, the Indian equivalent of steak and potatoes or spaghetti and .171 Like Rama Rau, Jaffrey, and Sahni, Koul’s cookbook serves as an attempt at helping the West meet and understand the East, the point of convergence being the enjoyment of Indian cuisine.172

While Koul promises to cover daily Indian food in her cookbook, the recipes are her individual interpretation of commonplace Indian cuisine. She includes instructions for preparing lamb biriyani, tandoori chicken, and shahi korma, dishes representative of

Mughlai cuisine she deems far richer than everyday fare.173 Tandoori chicken, arguably the most popular Indian entrée, is an invented tradition rather than a traditional dish, as it

56 only became mainstream in the 1950s through the emerging Indian restaurant industry.174

Shahi korma is the refers to the braising technique used to create the dish and is literally named for the Mughal emperor, a far cry from typical Indian cuisine. Though dal and vegetables make up a greater proportion of the Indian diet even for nonvegetarians, the chapter on nonvegetarian recipes is larger than the vegetarian. Koul admits that some recipes have been adjusted to adapt to a new time and place, exemplified by substituting ground for ground lamb and making , a vegetarian appetizer, out of corn flour rather than lentils. Ultimately, Koul’s book is her interpretation of food and family, as dishes created, influenced, or perfected by family members have their names attached to the recipes. Curries Without Worries represents Koul’s attempt to articulate Indian food and identity while maintaining connections to her family. Like any cookbook, it is an encapsulation of the author’s interpretation of society and culture, adapting Indian food culture to an American setting.

Increased contact and curiosity with Indian food and culture led to the flourishing of Indian restaurants, an industry that makes approximately five billion dollars annually, throughout the United Kingdom and the United States.175 “Going for a curry” became a weekly trip for many in the British Isles, and restaurants allowed new immigrants, typically from present day Pakistan and , to carve a niche and gain a foothold in an unfamiliar land.176 After World War II, Sylethi immigrants from Bangladesh bought bombed out shops, gave them a fresh lick of paint, and tacked curry onto the old menus, placing Indian food in the mind and heart of British working and middle class life.177 Uma Narayan argues that acceptance of Indian food in the West demonstrates “the acceptable face of ,” temporarily consuming the

57 Orient to define one’s own identity, while Elizabeth Buettner claims that curry serves as a vehicle for denying, masking, and articulating racism.178 Nevertheless, Indian restaurants serve as the most familiar setting for consumption of Indian food in the West, with The

Bombay Palace Cookbook by Stendahl accentuating the popularity of Indian food as interpreted by Indian restaurants.

Published in 1985, The Bombay Palace Cookbook describes the cuisine served throughout the restaurant chain as based on ancient Mughal recipes to which chefs have added a modern flavor, refining them to suit the Western palate, illustrating a fusion of tradition and modernity in the name of commercialism.179 Though Mughlai cooking makes up the majority of the cookbook and restaurant menu, Stendahl includes examples of vegetarian and nonvegetarian cooking based on the different food styles of the vast

Indian subcontinent.180 Reiterating previous cookbooks, the book explains that though

Indian cuisine requires spices, as cooking without spice is not Indian cooking, North

Indian cuisine is suave rather than fiery, once again prescribing every spice mixture as a garam masala.181 Contradicting Madhur Jaffrey’s declaration that it was impossible to find good Indian food in restaurants, Stendahl states,

“Unfortunately, poor Western cooks have given Indian cuisine a bad name by making a flour-thick white sauce sprinkled with a spoonful of desiccated ‘curry powder’ (which too often is little more than weakly spiced ground turmeric). The resulting gluey mess has neither flavor nor interest.”182 Contrarily, Stendhal maintains that a béchamel sauce combined with a good curry powder makes an effective dish, still promoting an oversimplification of Indian cuisine based on Western misunderstandings. The Bombay Palace version of dosa serves as another misrepresentation, as it lists and wheat flour as the key ingredients rather than the combination of rice and lentils in a traditional dosa. Recipes for “Stir

58

Fried Curry” and “Curried ,” a recipe which the author admits is “a long way from

Indian cooking,” exhibit adapting Indian flavors to other gastronomic styles.183

Ultimately, The Bombay Palace cookbook serves as a commercial for the Bombay Palace restaurant, indicated by mentioning the restaurant’s “famous luncheon ” and claiming it was impossible to make authentic tandoori dishes at home, but one could certainly enjoy them at restaurant locations.184 Yet, an Indian restaurant perfectly illustrates an individual conception of Indian identity, articulating “India” in a commercialized manner that dominates conceptions of Indian food in the Western imagination.

While The Bombay Palace Cookbook attempts to encapsulate the entirety of the restaurant menu and Julie Sahni’s works provide and extensive array of Indian food,

Vijay Madavan’s Cooking the Indian Way, published in 1985, simplifies Indian cuisine to a small selection of entrées one could use to prepare daily menus. Nowhere, Madavan declares, do contrasts of geography, climate, and people appear as extreme as in India, referring to India’s disparity between tropics, mountains, deserts along with diversity among the population.185 Madavan’s discussion of “the people of India” focuses extensively on the proposed Aryan invasion, a theory laced with the remnants of the

British Orientalist project and a debate among present day Indian scholars with political motivations. According to Madavan, Indians in the southern part of the country, belonging to a dark-skinned ethnic group, descend from the earliest inhabitants of India, pushed south by the light-skinned invaders as they established their own powerful .186 This racialization of the Indian population is another vestige of colonial rule, as ethnographers such as H.H. Risley utilized scientific racism to divide the Indian

59 population in order to more effectively rule over the subcontinent.187 Additionally, the

Aryan invasion theory is a point of contention in present day Indian politics and academia, as Hindu nationalist scholars and politicians discredit the theory, itself only the best possible answer regarding India’s ancient history based on available archaeological and linguistic evidence rather than an absolute fact, to justify their political agenda.188

Madavan’s family originally lived in Kerala in South India before settling in , resulting in a South Indian interpretation of the invasion as “light skinned imperialism from the North.”

Further displaying a South Indian perspective, she attests that changed numerous times due to various invasions, while South India, preserving more of its early culture, “represents classic Indian cooking at its finest.”189 Despite this, her cookbook reflects a North Indian menu, with recipes for kebab and yogurt chicken

(murg dahi). The only particularly South Indian dish is a recipe for “pumpkin curry” translated to sambhar. Rather than a specific dish, sambhar represents a category of dishes made with lentils and dal eaten over rice; a sambhar made from a specific vegetable bears a separate name to differentiate it from other dishes. Her recipe for the pumpkin sambhar calls for brown or red lentils (masoor dal) even though a sambhar is typically made with yellow pigeon (toor dal). Though a comparatively limited cookbook compared to the works of Jaffrey, Sahni, and others, Madavan’s Cooking the

Indian Way reveals a specific interpretation of India’s identity based on family heritage and lived experience.

Most cookbooks published after Indian independence strive to define Indian cuisine through the examining food practices within the subcontinent, with varying

60 degrees of success based on agendas and biases. Rather than a book discussing food prepared in India, ’s Indian Cuisine is an interpretation and adaptation of

Indian flavors based on his experience cooking in the United Kingdom and the United

States. Merchant, a film producer and friend of Madhur Jaffrey (an actress before engaging in culinary writing), sought to recreate in the Indian flavors he and Jaffrey grew up with.190 Merchant’s experience parallels Jaffrey’s, as both grew up in urban India (Merchant in Bombay and Jaffrey in Delhi) with servants that cooked for the family, though he notes that his mother and all six of his sisters were superb cooks. It was upon leaving India that Merchant took an interest in food and cooking, learning about French, Italian, and other culinary traditions while living and working in the United

States.191 Despite similar backgrounds, Merchant and Jaffrey achieve their goal of defining Indian flavors to Americans in different ways. Jaffrey, though limited to Uttar

Pradesh and Delhi, presents recipes for characteristically Indian dishes with new creations added sparingly to underline the versatility of Indian spices. Though claiming that his dishes are essentially Indian, many of Merchant’s recipes are not Indian in origin, but an application of Indian flavors to new dishes, a pragmatic and experimental approach to cooking.192 For every traditional dish like (a curry of lamb), (a Gujarati make of fermented chick pea ), or bhindi masala (okra), there is a dish like “ in Garlic-Lemon Butter” made with cumin and chili powder or “Indian .” Showing little concern with depicting daily Indian fare, Merchant devotes very little time to recipes with dal, instead concentrating on meat recipes that are admittedly not examples of traditional Indian cooking.193 In his review of Ismail

Merchant’s Indian Cuisine, food critic remarks that Merchant’s work,

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“[…] is not national. It does not deal with traditional concepts. And it is not regional. It is simply one man’s inspired notion of what his native land’s food should taste like.”194

Merchant’s cookbook is not a representation of Indian national cuisine, but it is an interpretation and expression of Indian identity, adapting Indian flavors to new ingredients and dishes as Indians adapt to new places and developments in a rapidly changing world.

In similar fashion to Merchant’s individual interpretation of Indian cuisine,

Yamuna Devi’s Lord ’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking offers a unique, individual interpretation of food, religion, and the Indian nation. Devi was born Joan Campanella, but upon meeting A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, known to his disciples as Srila Prabhupada, in New York before her sister’s wedding, she became enchanted with the man, his philosophy, and Indian vegetarian cooking, joining the

International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly referred to as the

“Hare Krishna” movement. Hare Krishna, popular in the 1960s as a segment of Western counterculture, represents an individual interpretation of India and Hindu religion, as

Srila Prabhupada’s reading of the led to coopting and reworking aspects of Hinduism, presenting Krishna as the supreme deity in a monotheistic religion. In an era of social upheaval highlighted by social movements and protest of the War,

Hare Krishna provided a vehicle for those dissatisfied with Western politics to latch onto, an appropriation of agreeable aspects of the East to refute disagreeable aspects of the

West.

Initially feeling “inexorable apathy toward anything spiritual,” Devi cites cooking with Srila Prabhupada the key event that led her to embrace the Hare Krishna movement.

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Descended from a family of serious cooks, some of them trained in classical , she considered this experience “the most formative and thrilling of my life.”195

Because of her culinary background, Devi became Srila Prabhupada’s personal cook, and she made it her life’s work to please the swami through cooking; to earn the favor of Srila

Prabhupada was the equivalent of earning approval from Krishna.196 Akin to theories of

Brahmin spiritual purity, she informs the reader in her recipe for chappati that Srila

Praphupada knew how to create perfect simply feeling the wheat flour, revealing his holiness through food preparation.197 “Perfection assuredly comes with determined practice,” Devi explains, whether that be making pooris (fried ) or living a spiritual life in the name of Lord Krishna.198 The stories of travels and experiences throughout Devi’s cookbook preserves the memory of her swami and keeps the ISKCON alive, a limited and problematic Western interpretation of India’s identity.

The embrace of the Hare Krishna movement by Western counterculture signifies an appropriation of Hindu religion and symbols, embracing a sense of ancient wisdom and timelessness to reject contemporary politics and modernity. Though Devi’s cookbook is an extensive study of India’s vegetarian cuisine, discussing regional differences and presenting a wide variety of dishes, it renders India as primordial and static, ignoring India’s rapid modernization in the late twentieth century to suit the spiritual needs of ISKCON followers. Devi claims that eighty percent of India’s population is vegetarian, approximately 600 million people out of an estimated 760 million at the time of publication in 1987, aiming to legitimize vegetarianism by demonstrating the sheer volume and labeling vegetarians as the majority in the Indian subcontinent.199 Although the majority of Indians could be considered de facto

63 vegetarians due to the expensive price of meat, K.T. Achaya notes that in 1994 only twenty five or thirty percent of the Indian population as a whole identified as total vegetarians; it would be impossible for that many people to completely change dietary habits in only seven years.200 Devi later states that the Indians (erroneously referred to as

“Vedic” throughout the book) by and large embrace a diet similar to their ancestors and that cooking stoves in India changed very little since the ancient past, portraying India as unchanging despite millennia of societal development.201 Tradition is certainly a highlighted factor in Indian cuisine and culture, Indians themselves celebrating the fact that their culture descends from a society as old if not older than Babylon and Ancient

Greece, but the representation of India as static ignores a history of change and upheaval and weakens the very culture one is trying to celebrate. Additionally, Devi refers to the

Third Indo-Pakistani War as a skirmish, trivializing the rivalry and conflict between the two nations.202 Though looking to India seeking and embracing spirituality, Devi’s cookbook and the Hare Krishna movement demonstrate an imperfect interpretation, objectifying Indian culture as an icon employed to refute Western modernity.

Nonetheless, it serves as another articulation of identity, defining India through its cuisine in a limited manner as with other cookbook authors seeking to establish Indian identity in a postcolonial world.

Rather than being “the end of Indian history,” the period from 1947 to 1990 saw a contest over interpretations of India’s past present and future. Unlike the colonial or nationalist cookbooks, there are no uniform voices regarding Indian identity after independence, as individuals offered unique and specific incarnations of what India was and what India should be. Some cookbook authors continued to refute Western

64 misconceptions and stereotypes regarding Indian food and culture, while others consciously or unconsciously perpetuated vestiges of colonialism into the present day.

Rather than a single “Indian culture,” voices after independence reflect various articulations of a specific Indian identity. Just as the same Indian dish can taste completely different in two neighboring households, interpretations of Indian identity in cookbooks vary based on the environment and life experiences of the author. The conclusion of the nationalist struggle and the achievement of independence resulted in a nation with an uncertain identity, an identity cookbook authors attempted to interpret through discussions of Indian cuisine. The complexities of identity only persisted after economic liberalization in the 1990s, as India dealt with the tensions of tradition and modernity as well as its status as a rising power in a globalizing world.

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CHAPTER V

LIBERALIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE TENSION OF TRADITION AND

MODERNITY: COOKBOOKS FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT

“However, while I was researching this book, I came to realize that times have changed all over the world, even in India, and that many Indian housewives working outside the home, have had to make the same sort of practical compromises that women in , in the United States and have had to make. Nostalgic descriptions of British homes fragrant with the scent of freshly baked bread and cakes, or of Italian kitchens festooned with sheets of homemade golden give as false an impression as Indian cookery books full of descriptions of family servants who spend each day grinding spices for elaborate dishes. In India today, in households without domestic help, good is still prepared, but the more complicated and exotic dishes are reserved for special occasions.”203 -Diane , Favorite Indian Food (1990) In response to economic crisis in 1991 caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union

(India’s ally due to the United States’ backing of Pakistan to establish a sphere of influence in the ) and a spike in oil prices, India initiated economic liberalization. This ended many of the self-sufficiency measures supported by Prime

Minister to prevent another epoch of Western colonialism, such as high tariffs and public monopolies. Since the liberalization of India’s economy, India’s GDP increased from $274.8 billion to approximately $2.84 trillion, ranking seventh in the world based on nominal GDP and third based on purchasing power parity, making India one of the preeminent economic powers.204 India has asserted its military strength over

66 the past two decades, as the nation currently has the third largest military defense force fueled by the world’s sixth highest military expenditure.205 As a potential world superpower, India’s identity is a prominent issue not only for deciphering Indian cookbooks, but for understanding and predicting domestic and international policy.

Indian cookbook production expanded tremendously since 1990, coinciding with the development of cooking shows for Indian television channels and food blogs, exemplifying what Tyler Cowen labels as the “Cookbook Theory of Economics,” which states that countries more advanced economically are more likely to produce cookbooks found on bookshelves. Cookbooks measure how far these societies moved toward greater commercialization, large-scale production, and standardization of the production process.206 The Indian cookbooks of the 1990s display many modern trends, such as

“quick and easy recipes,” greater inclusion of international cuisine, and increased emphasis on healthy items, all elements of modern culinary fashion. Nevertheless, many traditional elements remain in Indian cookbooks, allowing readers not only to make dishes “like their mothers and grandmothers did,” but representing the inherent tension and resulting hybridity between tradition and modernity. Just as India attempts to define its identity in a period of growth and uncertainty, cookbook authors offer wide-ranging interpretations of India’s cuisine and identity.

While authors of Indian descent continued to articulate their interpretations of identity in the postcolonial era, authors of European descent simultaneously offered their conceptions of late twentieth century India. Jennifer Brennan’s Curries and Bugles: A

Memoir and Cookbook of the British Raj and Diane Seed’s Favorite Indian Food reveal divergent outlooks regarding the identity of the Indian subcontinent, a far cry from the

67 logic of colonialism and Ornamentalism embedded in British cookbooks published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though both published in 1990, these cookbooks present Indian cuisine in different fashions based on the author’s experiences living in India. Brennan, an author of Thai and East Asian cookbooks as well, deems her work an intensely personal book due to being a child and grandchild of the British Raj; the cookbook celebrates the food, people, and places of the British Raj “to recapture and record what that long-ago life was like: how colonialists and empire builders lived.”207

Brennan’s cookbook drips of nostalgia for the British Empire. As she notes that the world for children in India was a wonderful place she shall never forget, with food serving as the catalyst for so many events integral to her upbringing and childhood memories.208

Similar to cookbooks by Anglo-Indians, many of the recipes are ornate European fare such as “Potato Crepes of with Salmon Crème” and “Glazed Duck and

Stuffed Apples in Calvados,” but Brennan also includes Indian style dishes favored by the Raj such as mulligatawny soup and ghosh (lamb or mutton cooked with greens, typically spinach). Though not seeking to enforce colonial rule or completely subjugating Indians as inherently inferior to British civility, colonial stereotypes do persist in Brennan’s work. After surviving a bout of dysentery as a child, Brennan’s family considered curries bad for her due to the notion that “all curries were too spicy.”

Furthermore, Brennan states that she ate many versions of stuffed , believing that the cook forgot what he made last time and concocted a new filling for each occasion, a comment displaying the low regard for the memory of cooks dating back to Dainty

Dishes for Indian Tables in 1879.209 Brennan’s Curries and Bugles reveals the continued nostalgia for the British Empire despite decolonization occurring decades earlier. Just as

68 the James Bond films celebrated the mystique of British colonialism and superiority,

Curries and Bugles keeps the memory of the British Raj alive into the late twentieth century. India as a colony remains a part of the British imagination, colonialism still serving as an integral part of postcolonial identity articulation.

In contrast to this longing for carefree childhood days in British Empire, Diane

Seed’s Favorite Indian Food reflects a cosmopolitan interpretation on the relationship between India and Europe. Seed’s first contact with Indian came through literature and teaching English to Indian students in Italy, the students and their parents freely indulging her passion for the subcontinent.210 Seed regards Indian food as flexible; rather than serving Indian food by itself for a dinner party, she recommends serving European food as an accompaniment for a main course of Parsi fish parcels (patrani machi), resulting in an international food experience.211 Instead of claiming that her cookbook represents the perfect representation of Indian cuisine, Seed remarks that culinary information is often turned upside down or contradicted based on regional differences, exemplified through her collection of curries of different color based on the local variation of spices.212

Though attempting to situate and legitimize Indian cuisine among the food ways of the

West, there are some adjustments to recipes based on more commonly found ingredients, such as making a South Indian vegetarian dish with mung beans and Swiss (the latter not used in Indian cuisine). Additionally, Seed focusing on the “heady excesses” of

Wajid Ali in a chicken dish bearing his namesake, akin to the stereotype of Oriental decadence discussed in Edward Said’s Orientalism.213 Just as lived experiences dictated cookbook content of Anglo-Indians in the British Raj, Indian nationalists, and post- independence authors of Indian descent, Seed’s status as a world traveler rather than a

69 citizen of the British Raj or the Indian nation states results in her book adopting a cosmopolitan stance on Indian cuisine. Rather than defending the colonizer or colonized,

Seed places Indian food in tandem with European fare in an interconnected world.

Favorite Indian Food serves as a compromise between East and West as well as tradition and modernity, as Seed stresses that through modern technology, such as electric coffee grinders for spices and food processors to make dough for bread, “Indian food is within reach of everyone.”214 Compared to Brennan’s nostalgia for the British Raj, Seed’s interpretation of Indian cuisine places India within a modernizing and globalizing world.

Dhershini Govin Winodan’s Indian Food Today further highlights India’s connectedness with the rest of the world, presenting classic Indian dishes as well as entrées with a definite influence by other Asian flavors.215 As with Sita Patel’s Easy

Indian Cook-Book adapting Indian food to a Hong Kong setting, Winodan’s dishes are created by the influence of neighbors in cosmopolitan , a multicultural trading port with a significant Indian population.216 Dishes such as “Chili Chicken with Oyster

Sauce,” a combination of Chinese and Indian flavors, “Garoupa in Spicy Black Sauce,” an Indo-Thai fusion, and a version of “” with tamarind, eggplant, and okra demonstrate the acculturation of food customs between numerous different cultures.

Along with internationalism, Winodan’s work urges the reader to take full advantage of modern help, acknowledging that the greatest obstacle to cooking is the time it takes.217

Kitchen appliances such as pressure cookers, choppers, blenders, deep-fryers, microwaves, and even rice cookers along with one dish meals make cooking significantly easier for a new generation of women (and men, she notes).218 Advocating use of modern technology in cooking marks a shift away from the instructions of nationalist

70 writers like I.R. Dey, who urged her readers that only using clay pots and Indian tools in the traditional manner resulted in authentic cuisine; the use of metal utensils represented the corrupted cooking of the colonizers and their cooks poorly imitating true Indian flavor. Winodan admits that even the best blender cannot quite achieve the same results as a stone or mortar and pestle for grinding spices, but for the of convenience, she favors using a blender.219 Indian Food Today, the alone indicating a newer representation of Indian cuisine, mirrors the inherent tension between tradition and modernity in contemporary India, a rapidly modernizing country yearning for world power while simultaneously looking to preserve its traditions and prevent succumbing to the values of the West. This internal conflict of identity is one of the biggest influences on India’s domestic policy and thus international politics into the twenty-first century.

Explicitly focusing on the convergence of tradition and modernity is Julie Sahni’s

1990 publication of Mogul Microwave. Like Classic Indian Cooking, this book specifically focuses on the cooking of the Mughal aristocracy, though she insists that this is because of the large percentage of braised dishes in Mughlai cuisine, as this cooking style is extremely successful when adapted to the microwave.220 Sahni, a classically trained chef and self-proclaimed “guardian of Old World traditions” informs her readers that she had to “come out of the closet” to use and embrace the microwave as a cooking tool rather than a method to heat leftover food.221 She, like many people in the culinary world, viewed microwave cooking as scientific, precise, and inhumane, fearing displacement of traditional methods of cooking by dispassionate machines.222 Yet, after cooking in a microwave every day for almost two years, Sahni argues, “The microwave is neither a savior nor devil, neither miracle nor monster.; it is a tool for cooking food.”223

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Microwaves did not threaten conventional methods of cooking, it worked in tandem with other kitchen appliances and cooking techniques under the control and supervision of the cook. Rather than a binary between tradition and modernity, Sahni’s Mogul Microwave attempts to bridge the divide between the two opposing concepts, to adapt traditional

Indian cooking to modern technology.

Sahni’s cookbook provides recipes for many of the most popular dishes in

Mughlai cuisine and Indian restaurants, such as lamb rogan josh, malai (meat or vegetable balls in a tomato cream sauce), matar paneer (peas with paneer cheese), and tandoori chicken. Most of the recipes claim to take less than thirty minutes to make, allowing busy cooks to make ostentatious Mughal food quickly and efficiently, perpetuating Victorian norms of domesticity regarding economy in the household. Sahni explains that not only can a microwave produce classic Mughlai cuisine, some dishes turn out better cooked in a microwave than through traditional methods. For example, making traditional papad (crisp lentil wafers) is an elaborate process that involves a great deal of time, cooking oil for frying, mess, and a certain loss of flavor as spices leach into the oil.224 By contrast, papad made in the microwave cook in about thirty seconds or less, retaining flavor without the unhealthy fat and mess. Dal, notorious for taking a long time to cook, sticking to cookware, and over without notice, benefits greatly from microwave cooking, which combines pressure cooker speed with stove top texture control.225 As with Classic Indian Cooking, this cookbook features very little representation of South Indian dishes, and there are few explicit mentions of Sikh and

Jain cuisine. Rather than defending traditional methods of cooking and shunning the use of technology, Sahni embraces microwave cooking, embracing modernity as a method to

72 preserve and expedite classic Mughlai cuisine. Unlike other cookbook authors and contemporary Indian politicians, Sahni does not see a strict binary between tradition and modernity, where embracing one results in the loss of the other. Microwaves and modern kitchen appliances serve as methods to preserve traditional cuisine, adapting traditional aspects of Indian identity to modern conceptions of the nation and its food.

Similarly seeking to rework traditional Indian cooking into a contemporary setting, Neelam Batra’s Indian Vegetarian, published in 1994, reiterates themes of tradition, modernity, and legitimacy established in earlier cookbooks published after

Indian independence. Batra intends to depart from more traditionally focused cookbooks a blend the best of Indian and American cultures “[…] to create a flavorful marriage between the abundance of the with the treasures of the Old.”226 Recipes such as “Cherry Tomatoes Filled with Yellow Mung Beans” and potato skins stuffed with ricotta as a paneer replacement spiced with cumin and garam masala exemplify the attempt to unite culinary styles. Batra notes the evolution of American cooking from

“meat and potatoes” dishes of the 1950s to the gradual acceptance of pasta dishes and stir-fry meals; these dishes became so familiar to Americans that the labels of “Italian” of

“Chinese” are no longer affixed.227 It is Batra’s goal that Indian cooking, which is heart healthy, earth friendly, modern, easy, and fun, be as readily accepted into the American culinary lexicon, an ornament to and identity.228 Batra argues that

Indian vegetarian cooking serves great utility due to its health benefits, as a combination of dal, rice, and vegetables results in a nutritionally sound meal. Seeking to move past

“exotic and mysterious visions” of Indian food in the American imagination, Batra aims to merge the binaries of East and West as well as tradition and modernity, adapting

73 traditional Indian cooking to a modern American audience with the hope that Americans recognize the benefits and pleasures of Indian vegetarian cuisine.229

Though Batra’s work claims to bridge divisions between Eastern and Western cuisine, The Indian Vegetarian paradoxically results in a new binary, in which Eastern cuisines are superior to their counterparts in the West. In contrast to Indians, Batra believes Americans condition their taste buds to a very narrow definition of , i.e. the addition of too much salt; because of this, Americans need to change their traditional cooking and consumption habits.230 Batra finds teaching Americans about

Indian spices ironic, as the quest to obtain Indian spices led to the discovery of the New

World and the beginning of European imperialism.231 Furthermore, she contends that while adding lemon or slices to cold water is chic in Western countries, the adventurous nature of the Indian cook prompts frequent and imaginative uses of all sorts of herbs and spices to continually surprise, quench, and refresh thirsty palates.232 It is

Indian cuisine in Batra’s opinion that demonstrates creativity, skill, and produces diverse and delicious flavors when compared to those from the West. Additionally, Batra presents Indian culture and vegetarianism as timeless, deeming India as ageless and seamless in the passing of time.233 As with Yamuna Devi’s vegetarian cookbook, Batra ties Indian vegetarianism to ancient wisdom, and claims that there are few outside influences on Indian culture. This is a false statement that ignores acculturation from numerous sources and presents India as static and unchanging in a way that does not match the reality of India’s history, akin to the Orientalist project by European imperialists to render “the other” as fixed and unchanging to aid and justify colonialism.

In her quest to demonstrate the efficacy of traditional Indian vegetarianism in the present

74 day, to legitimize Indian cuisine to an American audience in the same manner as Sahni,

The Indian Vegetarian creates a binary between superior cooking in the East and bland cooking of the West. The conflict between Eastern and Western identities plays a significant role in Indian politics and decisions, with the anxiety of India “losing its

Eastern identity” in the name of industrialization a significant question in the postcolonial era. In particular, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seeks to refute the West entirely, embracing Hinduism and tradition while simultaneously looking to guide India to prominence as an international superpower. Neelam Batra’s vegetarian cookbook represents her interpretation of Indian identity to an American audience, essentializing

Indian cuisine and the nation as inherently superior to its counterparts in the West.

The interplay between tradition and modernity, using modern cooking methods to produce traditional food with no alleged loss of authenticity, serves as the crucial theme of Step by Step Indian Recipes: Tandoori, part of a series of cookbooks published by

Padmini in 1995. Unlike the ponderous tomes produced by Julie Sahni and

Yamuna Devi (with varying degrees of success in that regard), Mehta’s cookbook is only sixty-four pages and focuses on a specific style of cooking rather than a or an all-encompassing representation of Indian food. The desire for specialized cookbooks in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the ascendance of niche cookbooks, smaller and more accessible texts relating to one ingredient, cooking method, or even medical issue.234 Though tandoori cooking specifically refers to the oven used for cooking, a tandoor, Mehta’s recipes call for a conventional oven to cook meat, bread, or veggies if one does not have a personal tandoor. Most of the recipes require high heat but thus entail reduced cooking times, the most time-consuming portion of food

75 preparation being non-labor-intensive marinating, making traditional tandoori cooking accessible to those with a busy schedule. Beloved Indian food, “a cuisine as ancient as its civilization,”235 is achievable with clear instruction and proper kitchen equipment, uniting traditional cuisine with modern technology and desire for efficiency. Yet, as is the case with other niche cookbooks, a book devoted tandoori style cooking represents a limited interpretation of Indian cuisine. Though archaeological evidence suggests that Indus

River Valley Civilizations utilized clay , tandoori food is another branch of

Mughlai cooking used exclusively in North India. Moreover, tandoori cookery, most notably tandoori chicken, was made popular by Indian restaurants beginning in the 1950s rather than representing a traditional and timeless entity in Indian cuisine. Mehta’s Step by Step Indian Cooking: Tandoori offers another reflection of Indian identity, an attempt to reach a compromise between the concepts of tradition and modernity in the same manner as the Indian nation.

While Madhur Jaffrey and Julie Sahni became renowned culinary authors in the

1970s and 1980s, Monisha Bharadwaj published numerous cookbooks in the 1990s and

2000s, becoming a prominent voice in defining India’s cuisine, and therefore the nation’s identity. Like Sahni, Bharadwaj is a professional chef, teaches cooking classes, and uses her cookbooks to legitimize Indian cuisine to a Western audience. Bharadwaj’s Indian

Spice Kitchen, published in 1996, discusses Indian history and cuisine through spices, linking recipes based on spices rather than separating dishes based on courses or vegetarian and nonvegetarian chapters. Bharadwaj describes each spice, its appearance and taste, how to store it, and culinary and medicinal benefits, such as mustard for arthritic pain or licorice for sore throat. Continuing the trend started by Sahni’s Classic

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Indian Cooking, Bharadwaj discusses Ayurveda, ancient Indian holistic medicine, regarding it as a viable, efficient way of life tried and tested in India for three thousand years.236 Faith in the healing powers of Ayurveda, which Bharadwaj argues is so embedded in Indian society that many accept its health guidelines as natural customs,237 reveals another attempt to tie Indian cuisine to ancient wisdom and combine tradition with modern living. Tradition, Bharadwaj contends, is the common thread linking India’s regional cultures, even in the hustle and bustle of the present.238

Recognizing the diversity of Indian food customs, Bharadwaj attempts to present all of India’s regional cuisines, analyzing a different state or region based on popular lentil and by actively including South Indian recipes for the reader that may only know of the more generally accepted North Indian dishes.239 Bharadwaj’s emphasis on regional differences in cuisine and culture signifies an articulation of identity that celebrates

India’s diversity and complexity rather than presenting cookery of one region as the singular representation of Indian identity. Bharadwaj seeks a unified Indian cuisine through highlighting diversity and tradition; she declares that each community in India has its own way of cooking, but insists each method is greatly enjoyed by the rest.240

Spices serve as the fundamental building block for Indian dishes, a common link between culinary practices of North, East, South, and West. By dedicating an entire cookbook to spics rather than dishes, Bharadwaj offers an interpretation of a united India strengthened by its diversity just as Jaffrey did in the 1980s. Though this ideal does not always reflect reality, with sectarian tension and “routine violence” still problems in twenty-first century

India, Indian Spice Kitchen offers an interpretation of what India should be as it struggles to define its identity domestically and internationally.

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Building off her celebrity developed in the 1970s and 1980s through various cookbooks and BBC television program, Madhur Jaffrey continued to publish cookbooks in the 1990s and 2000s. Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Cooking published in

1996 provides readers with seventy recipes easily prepared in under half an hour, the perfect solution for busy cooks.241 As with her previous works, she informs the reader that her book discusses instant, marvelous Indian food that one could not find in restaurants and reiterates that while Indian food is not necessarily hot, shying away from spices is akin to asking an Indian to stop being an Indian.242 Jaffrey suggests several time saving measures to assist the busy cook of the modern day, such as buying readily available at the grocery store, using French mustard rather than grinding mustard in , and utilizing a pressure cooker that reduces cooking time and allows the cook to read, sleep, or have a drink during meal preparation.243 One surprising short-cut is her advice to use “curry powder” in her recipe for “curried tuna.” More than twenty years after her original publication, Jaffrey seems to accept curry, which she initially considered degrading to Indian cuisine, as part of the Indian culinary lexicon. She suggests using Bolst’s hot curry powder, but later states that the cook can use whichever he or she likes, contradicting her assertion in 1973 that to use any curry power neglects the distinctiveness of Indian cuisine, making everything taste the same.244 Collen Taylor

Sen argues that another cookbook, Jaffrey’s publication of Ultimate Curry Bible in 2003, represents the ubiquitous presence of “curry” not only as integral to Indian cuisine, but as a global food.245 Jaffrey’s acknowledgement of “curry” as part of Indian food culture and utilization of modern technology parallel the tension and trade-off between tradition and modernity; while labeling an Indian dish “curry” does injustice to the cuisine according

78 to Jaffrey, perpetuating colonial misunderstandings of India, for expedience and familiarity, curry and curry powder along with modern cooking methods prove useful.

As India initiated economic liberalization, it invited greater foreign investment, expanding India’s contact with the rest of the world in an era defined by globalization.

Indian cookbooks display a growing sense of internationalism, best represented by Julie

Sahni’s Savoring Spices and Herbs (1996) and Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step Cookery

(2001). As with her previous works, Sahni begins with an anecdote from her travels, describing the intoxicating aroma of cloves as her boat approached an oncoming island.

However, the island she describes is not , or , but Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of Tanzania. Sahni explains that spices link Zanzibar, Canton,

Kashmir, and Trinidad though many miles separate these regions; though far apart they are so similar in the practice of culinary art.246 Sahni describes various spices, noting their origin and flavor pattern, along with providing recipes for spice mixtures.

Interestingly, she includes a recipe for curry powder, defining it as an old spice blend of

Indian origin, introduced and made famous by early English traders.247 A good curry powder, Sahni explains, is a valuable seasoning to add to the flavor possibilities of a dish; used creatively it can flavor condiments, dressings, vegetables, rice, and entrees.248

Aside from this spice recipe, the closest thing to a distinctly Indian dish is her recipe for

“ scallops kedgeree,” an iteration that is more Anglo-Indian in nature.249 Rather than defining India’s identity alone, Sahni presents India within a world system linked by spices despite similarities and differences. Not just an insular nation-state focused on self-sufficiency, India is part of a global system economically and gastronomically.

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Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step Cookery also places India within a global system, only her focus is on India’s culinary links to the “Far East.” Rather than connected by spices, though spices certainly do play a role throughout , Jaffrey considers Asian countries bound by grains, either wheat or rice.250 Far Eastern cooking depends on the magical mingling and balancing of flavors, a kaleidoscope of inventive permutations based on ingredients used and taste combinations.251 Though discussing the cuisine of various Asian countries, Jaffrey classifies recipes by ingredient rather than country of origin in an attempt to produce a balanced book. In fact, Indian recipes are least represented in an attempt to celebrate the cuisine of Malaysia, Thailand, , and

Vietnam among others. The Indian recipes Jaffrey includes are among the most popular dishes, such as tandoori chicken, samosas, pulaos and biriyanis, and South Indian dosa.

Though her book includes recipes from throughout the Far East and discusses Chinese influence on the regional and national cuisines of its neighbors, Jaffrey does not spend any time on recipes that are specifically Chinese. This is certainly not due to a lack of knowledge regarding , as Jaffrey explains Chinese presence in the history and cuisine of the Far East in great detail. Just as India expanded economically and militarily since the 1990s, China rose to become the second largest economy and military in the world. Competition for resources to fuel industrialization and border disputes since the 1960s make Sino-Indian relations tenuous at best despite attempts to improve diplomatic and economic ties. Jaffrey’s inclusion of the Far East while excluding China parallels food customs within India, as Thai food is becoming more popular while

Chinese cuisine is declining in popularity.252 Just as Julie Sahni’s Savoring Spices and

Herbs links India to Africa, the , and throughout Asia, Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step

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Cookery acknowledges India’s links throughout Asia, while rendering the cuisine of

China silent due to economic and military tension.

Liberalization and globalization led to greater entry of Western products, most notably Western and soft considered trendy and fashionable among

India’s population.253 While the diet of India’s poor has not deviated from daily grains and pulses, India’s middle and upper class have greater accessibility to a Western diet and all of the health detriments it entails.254 Indian cookbook authors recognized these developments and produced health conscious cookbooks for those wishing to eat Indian cuisine while managing their health. Both Shehzad Husain and Monisha Bharadwaj produced cookbooks presenting healthier methods of preparing Indian food, but do so in vastly different manners. Husain’s Healthy Indian Cooking assures the reader that “new

Indian cooking” is lighter, lower in fat and calories, and makes effective use of grains, pulses, and vegetables.255 Traditional cooking, she argues, is healthy by its very nature, using spices and aromatics such as ginger and turmeric for flavoring, both of which are low in calories yet offer a boost in flavor.256 Nevertheless, Husain insists that her recipes represent the richness of a two thousand year old tradition adapted to modern trends, replacing ghee with vegetable or , the latter not common Indian cuisine.257 Each recipe provides caloric measurements along with amount of fat, cholesterol, protein, , and vitamins and minerals if present, abiding by modern norms of nutrition. Husain’s attempts to adapt the tradition of India and filter it to her audience, presenting dishes based on a modern view of health.

Monisha Bharadwaj’s Healthy Indian Cooking (2003) also offers readers healthy interpretations of Indian cuisine. She dispels the belief that Indian cuisine is unhealthy

81 and fattening due to conceptions of rich and ostentatious “curries,” explaining that Indian food is a high-energy cuisine that if prepared correctly will lead to a fit, healthy, and vibrant life.258 Ill health, stress, anger and burnout are exacerbated by unhealthy eating in a fast-paced age according to Bharadwaj, problems lessened by both healthy eating and peaceful surroundings.259 Though focusing on health and providing some nutritional information, Bharadwaj’s cookbook does not provide calorie values or fat content for recipes. Instead, she relates the dishes back to Ayurvedic medicine, believing it enhances health, a general sense of well-being, and longevity.260 Rather than relying on modern nutritional information, Bharadwaj claims that the cure to the ills of modern life lies in

India’s tradition. She provides a glossary of Ayurvedic terms along with common ingredients, and color codes every recipe based on its corresponding chakra energy.

Ayurvedic wisdom is both practical and accessible, and coupled with common sense, it allows readers to progress toward a lifestyle of good health and vitality.261 Though many cookbooks since the 1990s stress modern, fashionable cooking, using technology in concert with trendy ingredients, Indian tradition does not disappear entirely from the pages of food texts. Neither tradition nor modernity completely eclipses the other, they constantly define and redefine the other, resulting in something new. Though not dealing with colonialism, Bharadwaj’s cookbook exemplifies Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity; the traced of the disavowed opposite is not repressed but repeated as a mutation, a hybrid between tradition and modernity.262 Though increasingly becoming a

“modern” nation state due to economic growth, India’s tradition plays a pivotal role in identity construction in both cookbooks and politics. Bharadwaj’s cookbook represents a

82 benign attempt to improve well-being, yet tradition serves as a powerful weapon based on political agendas.

Just as Bharadwaj’s work utilizes tradition to solve problems of everyday life,

Maithily Jagannathan’s South Indian Hindu Festivals and Tradition, published in 2005, attempts to guide readers on a demarcated path for practicing life in a way that nourishes physical, psychological, and spiritual needs.263 The book acts as a handbook for Hindu customs, traditions, and festivals, written specifically for the younger generation, particularly those outside of India feeling distance from their family and traditional roots.264 Jagannathan’s book is not only a cookbook, providing vegetarian recipes served on Hindu holidays, but includes a calendar of major festivals and a section describing

“the journey of the spiritual self,” a central tenet to Hindu philosophical thought.265 In similar fashion to Bharadwaj’s discussion of Ayurvedic wisdom, Jagannathan cites Hindu tradition as a solution for the ills of modern life as well as a cure for those feeling homesick or nostalgic for their childhood. She explains that consumption of food along with and vrathams, oaths to , represents an exercise of control of mind and spirit; one must ignore their animalistic needs in order to reach a higher plane, a better life closer to God.266 Jagannathan’s recipes are completely vegetarian based on orthodox

Hindu dietary restrictions based on religious purity, recipes avoid fish, eggs, and even garlic and onions. Hindu Festivals and Traditions not only speaks to nostalgia for childhood in India, but parallels religious revival in India due to the political ascendency of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The India National Congress Party (INC), represented by nationalist heroes Gandhi and Nehru, dominated Indian politics immediately after Indian Independence; all of India’s Prime Ministers were members of

83 the INC apart from a BJP interlude in the late 1970s. The BJP, a political party built on

Hindu nationalism rather than secularism267 of the INC, gained political clout since the late 1990s and currently enjoys power in Indian government. The BJP considers India a

Hindu nation needing to defend itself from alien threats, threats constituted by Muslims and Christians. Political conflict between the INC and BJP is specifically a contest over

India’s identity, a debate to determine whether India is a multicultural nation state, the melting pot of the East, celebrated by Jaffrey and Sahni, or a Hindu nation needing to defend itself from alien threats both internal and external. With India further enmeshed in a global system coupled with rising economic and military power, India’s identity not only matters for the population of India, but for the entire world.

Bharadwaj’s Indian Vegetarian Cooking, published in 2006, continues the theme of adapting tradition to the present day. As with her earlier work, Indian Spice Kitchen,

Bharadwaj’s vegetarian cookbook highlights regional cuisines and differences, a united

India through the linking of vegetarian cooking. Bharadwaj deems “the ability to absorb all influences, turn them around, and take ownership of new styles that make Indian cooking so fascinating and vibrant and a constantly evolving melee.”268 She groups her book into chapters based on India’s regions, discussing vegetarian entrees, , sides, desserts, and beverages representative of states in the North, South, East, and West. Her section on East India is the smallest in the book and only discusses Bengali cooking, signifying the continued preference for meat and fish (the vegetables of the sea) in

Bengal. As with Yamuna Devi, Bharadwaj incorrectly states the number of vegetarians in India, claiming that eighty-five percent of Indians are vegetarian due to religion, effort to accentuate vegetarianism in the subcontinent and legitimize vegetarian cooking on the

84 world stage.269 Though dal, rice, and vegetables constitute the majority of calories consumed, Indian society consists more of de facto vegetarians rather than those that identify as not eating meat. Vegetarian food, according to Bharadwaj, results in feeling happier, healthier, and more energetic after a meal, with an array of dishes to excite the palate.270

Bharadwaj insists that eating a vegetarian diet results in improved health and mood, while simultaneously fulfilling spiritual obligations and benefitting the environment. With animals becoming extinct, heightened air and water pollution, and inefficient use of land for breeding livestock animals, Bharadwaj calls for people to adopt a vegetarian diet to save the planet.271 She refers to the ecological benefits of vegetarianism throughout the book, such as the need to consume carotene to protect against air pollution and using banana leaves as biodegradable dining ware, touching on

India’s role in international environmental policy. The need to reduce the effects of climate change is one of the most important international questions of the twenty-first century, and India plays a crucial part in the success or failure of greenhouse gas reduction limits. Along with China, India is hesitant to embrace reduced emissions standards as an industrial leader and potential global superpower. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in the minds of Indian politicians, could cripple India’s destiny as a world leader. Moreover, there is resentment by both China and India regarding the fact that it is the , beneficiaries of industrialization in the nineteenth century largely through economic exploitation of colonies in Africa and Asia, instructing Asian powers to risk their economic promise, their ability to surpass Western power. Bharadwaj’s cookbook seeks to unify tradition and modernity, but also views vegetarianism as an

85 ecological salvation, her interpretation India as a leader in environmental policy. This ideal does not match Indian policy and its stances on climate change regulation, underscoring disconnect between nation and society as well as the anxieties of world power.

Tradition, modernity, and globalization converge in ’s How to

Cook Indian, published in 2011. Dubbed “the Rachel Ray of India,” Kapoor achieved fame as a television chef, his cooking show “Khana Khazana” remaining a fixture on

Indian television since 1993 instructing Indian housewives as well as Indians abroad in the art of Indian cookery. By watching his program on Sunday mornings, one could learn to make food “just like mom used to make” along with Western muffins and mousse with ease.272 Due to his father’s constant travel for work, Kapoor experienced

India’s different regional cuisines throughout his childhood, and he strives to include these regional differences throughout his cookbook. Kapoor deems Indian cuisine one of the richest and most diverse; it is healthy and complex, but also easier to prepare than one might expect.273 As with Sahni, Batra, and Bharadwaj, Kapoor considers Indian cuisine the best guide to vegetarian cooking, with India possessing an advanced repertoire of vegetarian dishes.274 Though Kapoor aims to celebrate traditional Indian cooking, he recognizes the impact of modern technology and globalization and references these developments. In his recipe for (spinach with paneer cheese), he states that modern technology has made seasonal items like spinach (a winter green in India) available year-round.275 His inclusion of Indo-Mexican and Indo-Italian recipes signify acculturation of food customs and the interconnectedness of globalization. "The new

India is changing so fast that I have trouble keeping up with what today’s audiences want

86 to eat," Kapoor states; "I know that they want to cook much more than what their families cooked. They want to try international cuisines, at restaurants and also at home."276

Dishes such as “Masala Fried Squid” demonstrate an attempt to embrace modern food trends and create food others want to make. However, Kapoor’s text ultimately views globalization with reservation, as he notes that he is not sure whether batata vada (fried potato ) or McDonald’s sell more in Mumbai; while he would choose the Indian snack, he fears a loss of Indian tradition to Western fast food and globalization.277 Moreover, he prefers samosas to and khakra (Gujrati flatbread) to potato chips, a personal preference but also a defense of Indian food as compared to its Western counterpart. Though presenting hybridized dishes and acknowledging the effects of globalization, Kapoor remains small-town India’s domestic god, his show and recipes targeted at domestic housewives still responsible for most household cooking throughout the Indian subcontinent.278 Tradition, modernity, and globalization are not mutually exclusive concepts, they interact and define one another, resulting in new interpretations and attitudes toward Indian cuisine and nation.

Rising economic and military power led to increased clout within the international community, and India remains an important voice for international policy. Thus, India’s articulation of its own identity, influenced by globalization and the attempt to balance tradition and modernity, is a crucial issue not only within the subcontinent, but abroad.

Cookbook authors since 1990 have sought to define Indian identity based on the interaction between these concepts, offering differing interpretations as varied as contemporary political opinions in the subcontinent of what India was and what India should be. Cookbooks parallel the tension and tribulations of maintaining traditional

87 values while simultaneously adjusting to industrialization and globalization. The anxieties produced by India’s rising power status domestically and internationally make

India’s definition of identity one of the most pressing concerns of the twenty first century. Conflict with Pakistan, distribution of wealth among a huge population, and international climate change policy hinge on India’s articulation of its own identity.

88

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

In “How to Make a National Cuisine,” Arjun Appadurai argued that India lacked a national cuisine and stated that cookbooks produced by Indian authors would rectify this, codifying a national cuisine and therefore a national identity (1988). This paper demonstrates that identity construction through cookbooks occurred long before

Appadurai’s article, revealing individual articulations of Indian identity based on ideologies of colonialism, nationalism, and postcolonialism while attempting to balance tradition and modernity. Anglo-Indian authors used their cookbooks to represent India as a colony of the British Empire, needing to be ordered and improved to suit British standards of civility and modernity. Cookbooks produced by Victorian women do not exclude Indian cuisine despite the rhetoric and practice of racial exclusion; their food texts include Indian dishes as a distinct aspect of British identity. In their political agitation against the injustices of imperial rule, Indian nationalists used cookbooks and food culture to define a distinctly Indian identity. This process continued even after

Indian independence in 1947, as Indians throughout the Indian diaspora used recipes as a

“maneuver of self-defense,” demonstrating “real Indian food” and legitimizing their presence in a postcolonial world. Finally, the period of economic liberalization beginning in the 1990s saw an explosion of Indian cookbooks and engagement with

89 media, offering various interpretations of India and its cuisine as it related to modern trends in healthy cuisine and “quick and easy meals,” while simultaneously attempting to maintain Indian tradition and define Indian identity into the twenty-first century.

A parable prominent in Buddhist tradition but dating back to Rig Veda describes a group of blind men touch an elephant for the first time, describing the elephant based on their partial experience. The man touching the leg remarks that the object is a tree, while the man feeling the tusks claims that it is a sword, partial interpretations of the elephant’s identity based on individual preconceptions and experiences. Indian cookbooks follow the same pattern, describing Indian identity based on upbringing, lived experience, and agendas for writing. Some experienced India as the foreign other, others as the motherland, and others still attempting the recreate Indian culture in a new setting abroad.

History is the study of human beings; it is individual articulations of Indian identity analyzed together that defines the Indian subcontinent. Thus, cookbooks are a vital tool to understand the history of India as interpreted by Indians as well as outsiders, noting how they represent India’s food and landscape, what is included, and excluded. Identity politics represented in cookbooks parallel historical and contemporary developments in

India, as the contest over India’s identity affects India’s minority groups just as much as the international community. How cookbook authors interpret India in future works parallel developments in the Indian subcontinent. The process of “making a national cuisine” is unending, determined by the ideologies of cookbook authors past, present, and future.

90

1 Jopi Nyman, “Cultural Contact and the Contemporary Culinary Memoir: Home, Memory, and Identity in

Madhur Jaffrey and Diana Abu-Jaber,” Auto/Biography Studies, Volume 24, Number 2 (Winter 2009): 282,

Accessed March 26, 2016, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/abs/summary/v024/24.2.nyman.html.

2 Robin Cook, “Robin Cook’s Masala Speech Excerpts,” , April 19, 2001,

Accessed April 4, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/19/race.britishidentity

3 Though the British developed tea plantations in India during the colonial period, tea remained a drink consumed by the British and Anglicized Indians rather than the entire population. Tea did not “become

Indian” until 1950s, when the India Tea Board created a massive advertising campaign to popularize tea in

North India. Combined with milk, previously the most popular drink in North India, and spices, tea in this form is called chai. See Colleen Taylor Sen, Food Culture in India, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood

Press, 2004), 26.

4 Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food, (New York: The Free Press,

2002), 140.

5 Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” Comparative

Studies in Society and History, Volume 30, Number 1 (January 1998): 11, Accessed January 7 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/179020.

6 Wyvern, Culinary Jottings for Madras, Facsimile of 1885 fifth edition published by Higginbotham of

Madras, (Devon, Great Britain: Prospect Books, 1994), 286.

7 Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote, (New

York: Palgrave Publishing, 2002), 8.

8 Eliza Acton, “Modern Cookery in All its Branches (1845),” in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by

Elizabeth Langland, (: Broadview Editions, 2010), 282.

9 Robert Riddell, Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book, 5th Ed., (Madras: The Press of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1860), v.

10 Ibid.

11 Mary A. Procinda, “Feeding the Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Discourse,”

Journal of Women’s History, Volume 15, Number 2 (Summer 2003), 123, Accessed March 24, 2016,

91

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v015/15.2pr ocida.html.

12 Riddell, Domestic Economy, 7.

13 Alan R. Beals, Gopalpur: A South Indian Village, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962), 35.

14 Riddell, Domestic Economy, 13.

15 Ibid, 373.

16 Colleen Taylor Sen, Curry: A Global History, (: Reaktion Books, 2009), 9.

17 Ibid.

18 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

19 Sen, Food Culture in India, 24.

20 Wyvern, Culinary Jottings, 17.

21 Ibid, 15.

22 Ibid, 27.

23 Ibid, 89.

24 Ibid, 171.

25 K.T. Achaya, A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, (Oxford: , 1998), 130.

26 Jayanta Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial

Bengal,” in Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and , eds. Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi

Srinivas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 75.

27 Wyvern, Culinary Jottings, 287.

28 Ibid¸ 496.

29 Antoinette M. Burton, “White Woman’s Burden British Feminists and the Indian Woman, 1865–1915."

Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 13, no. 4, (1990), Accessed March 12, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(90)90027-U.

30 Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, 7th Ed., (London:

William Heinemann, 1909), 7.

31 Ibid, 9.

92

32 Anonymous, Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, 2nd Ed., (Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1881), iii.

33 Ibid, iv.

34 Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors,” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),

112.

35 Jennifer Brennan, Curries and Bugles: A Memoir and a Cookbook of the British Raj, (New York:

HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 250.

36 Anon., Dainty Dishes, i.

37 Steel, Indian Housekeeper, vii.

38 Ibid, 3.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid, 6.

41 Ibid, 37.

42 Ibid, 105.

43 Ibid, 240.

44 Ibid, 244.

45 Ibid, 245. For a discussion on purity and ritual in Indian cooking, see Charles Malamoud, Cooking the

World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India, trans. David White, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).

46 Steel, Indian Housekeeper, 280.

47 Ibid, 369.

48 Carrie Cutcrewe, The Memsahibs Book of Cookery, 3rd Ed., (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co, 1903), x.

49 Ibid, 49.

50 Ibid, 359.

51 Ibid, 554.

52 Eliza Action, Modern Cookery in all its Branches, 2nd Ed., (: Blanchard and Lea, 1858), xxii.

53 I.R. Dey, Indian Cooking and Confectionery, (Calcutta, Naba Gouranga Press, 1942), 3.

54 Isabella Beeton, “Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861),” in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by Elizabeth Langland, (Toronto: Broadview Editions, 2010), 283.

55 Acton, “Modern Cookery,” in Cranford, 281.

93

56 Susan Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England,” Frontiers: A

Journal of Women’s Studies, Volume 16, Number 2/3, Gender, Nations, and Nationalisms (1996),

Accessed March 25, 2016,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3346803.

57 Daria Wingreen Mason, “Smithson’s Cookbook: English Curry,” Smithsonian Libraries Unbound (blog),

May 22, 2012, Accessed April 5, 2016, https://blog.library.si.edu/2012/05/smithsons-cookbook-english- curry/#.VwWohfkrLIU

58 Acton, “Modern Cookery,” in Cranford, 281.

59 Eliza Action, Modern Cookery, xix.

60 Acton, “Modern Cookery,” in “Domesticating Imperialism,” 60.

61 Acton, Modern Cookery, 221.

62 Ibid.

63 Brennan, Curries and Bugles, 24.

64 Acton, Modern Cookery, 222.

65 Isabella Beeton, “Book of Household Management (1861),” Project Gutenburg eBook, November 19,

2003, Accessed May 29, 2017, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10136/pg10136.html

66 Beeton, “Book of Household Management (1861),” in Curry: A Global History, 41.

67 Beeton, “Book of Household Management,” in The Raj at Table by David Burton, (London: Faber and

Faber, 1993), 118.

68 Cynthia Bertelsen, “Mrs. Beeton Goes to India,” Gherkins and Tomatoes (blog), August 25, 2009,

Accessed February 13, 2016, http://gherkinstomatoes.com/2009/08/25/12528/.

69 Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism,” 52.

70 Ibid, 60.

71 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2001), xix.

72 Burton, Raj at Table, 7.

73 Steel, Indian Housekeeper, 369.

74 A Lady Resident, The Englishwoman in India, (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1864), viii.

94

75 Collingham, Curry, 162.

76 Lady Resident, Englishwoman in India, 45.

77 Ibid, 57.

78 Ibid, 115.

79 Ibid, 199.

80 Brennan, Curries and Bugles, 287.

81 Ibid.

82 Collingham, Curry, 153.

83 E.P. Veerasawmy, Indian Cookery for use in All Countries, 5th Ed. (London: Arco Publishers Limited,

1955), 2.

84 Collingham, Curry, 153.

85 Veerasawmy, Indian Cookery, 2.

86 Ibid, 16.

87 Ibid, 34.

88 Ibid, 21.

89 Ibid, 123.

90 Ibid, 3.

91 Angma Jhala, “Cosmopolitan Kitchens: Cooking for Princely Zenanas in Late Colonial India,” in

Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, eds. Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 51.

92 Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2001); David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2001).

93 Jhala, “Cosmopolitan Kitchens,” 67.

94 Ibid, 54.

95 Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter,” 78.

95

96 Rachel Berger, “Between Digestion and Desire: Genealogies of Food in Nationalist North India,”

Modern Asian Studies, FirstView Article (February 2013), Accessed June 24, 2016, http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X11000850, 4.

97 Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter,” 80.

98 Ibid, 81.

99 Berger, “Digestion and Desire,” 7.

100 Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter,” 81.

101 Berger, “Digestion and Desire,” 10.

102 Dey, Cooking and Confectionery, 1.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid, 3.

105 Ibid, 6.

106 Sen, Food Culture in India, 81.

107 Dey, Cooking and Confectionery, 20.

108 Sen, Food Culture in India, 70.

109 Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking, (New York: William and Morrow Company, 1980), 2

110 Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford

University Press, 2006), 17.

111 Srimathi S. Meenakshi Ammal, Cook and See (Samaithu Par): Part One, trans. A.V. Padma, (Madras: S.

Meenakshi Ammal Publications, 1968), iii.

112 Ibid, iv.

113 Ibid, iii.

114 Theophano, Eat my Words, 2.

115 Uma Narayan, “Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity, and Indian Food,” in Dislocating Cultures:

Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 175.

116 Shakun Banfield, “A Memory of my Mother Savitri Devi Chowdhary, 1919-1996,” Landon and District

Community Archive, August 7, 2012, Accessed May 8, 2016, http://www.laindonhistory.org.uk/page_id__528.aspx.

96

117 Savitri Chowdhary, Indian Cooking, (London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1954), 1.

118 Ibid, 11.

119 Ibid, 13.

120 Indian Cuisine, Issued on behalf of the Department of Tourism, Ministry of Transport and

Communications, (: Press, 1960), 5.

121 Ibid, 12.

122 Swaran Pasricha and L.M. Rebello, Some Common Indian Recipes and their Nutritive Value,

(Hyderabad: Nutritional Research Laboratories, 1964), ix.

123 Sen, Food Culture in India, xviii.

124 Achaya, Dictionary of Indian Food, 108.

125 Antoinette Burton, The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau, (Durham: Duke University Press,

2007), 4.

126 Santha Rama Rau, Recipes: The Cooking of India, (New York: Time-Life Books, 1969), 2.

127 Ibid, 4.

128 Burton, Postcolonial Careers, 18.

129 Ibid, 5.

130 Ibid, 120.

131 Ibid, 112.

132 Santha Rama Rau to Bill Goolrick, October 29, 1968, in Antoinette Burton, The Postcolonial Careers of

Santha Rama Rau, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 134.

133 Rama Rau, Cooking of India, 5.

134 Madhur Jaffrey, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing, 1973), 3.

135 Ibid.

136 Ibid, 5.

137 Ibid, 6.

138 Ibid, 2.

139 Ibid, 13.

140 Ibid, 79.

97

141 Ibid, 104.

142 Sonia Faleiro, “Saving the Cows, Starving the Children,” New York Times, June 26, 2015, Accessed

March 29, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/saving-the-cows-starving-the- children.html?_r=0.

143 Jaffrey, Invitation to Indian Cooking, 265.

144 Yasmin , The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 2007).

145 Madhur Jaffrey, Indian Cookery, (London: BBC Books, 1982), 8.

146 Pranati Sengupta, The Art of Indian Cuisine, (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974), x.

147 Ibid, 6.

148 Ibid, 7.

149 Pandey, Routine Violence, 18.

150 Sita Patel, Sita Patel’s Easy Indian Cook-Book, (Hong Kong: Business Communications, 1976), 1.

151 Ibid, 3.

152 Ibid.

153 Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking, xv.

154 Ibid, xviii.

155 Ibid, 324.

156 Ibid.

157 Ibid, xvi.

158 Ibid, 52.

159 Colleen Taylor Sen, Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India, (London: Reaktion Books, 2015),

211.

160 Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking, 233.

161 Rhitu Chatterjee, "Egg War: Why India's Vegetarian Elite Are Accused of Keeping Kids Hungry," NPR,

July 14, 2015, Accessed April 28, 2016, http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/14/422592127/egg- wars-india-s-vegetarian-elite-are-accused-of-keeping-kids-hungry.

98

162 Julie Sahni, Classic Vegetarian and Grain Cooking, (New York: William and Morrow Company, 1985),

19.

163 Ibid, 24.

164 Ibid, 119.

165 Ibid, 187.

166 Ibid, 304.

167 Ibid, 18.

168 Sudha Koul, Curries Without Worries: An Introduction to Indian Cuisine, (Pennington, NJ: Cashmir,

1989), ix.

169 Ibid, 6.

170 Ibid, 17.

171 Ibid, 7.

172 Ibid, 20.

173 Ibid, 14.

174 Sen, Food Culture in India, 72.

175 Ibid, 136.

176 Collingham, Curry, 218.

177 Ibid, 223.

178 Narayan, Eating Cultures, 184; Elizabeth Buettner, “Going for an Indian: South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain,”

The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 80, No. 4, A Special Issue on Metropole and Colony (December

2008), Accessed February 4, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591113, 901

179 Stendahl, The Bombay Palace Cookbook: A Treasury of Indian Delights Adapted for the American

Kitchen, (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1985), 3.

180 Ibid, 5.

181 Ibid, 8.

182 Ibid, 192.

183 Ibid, 204.

99

184 Ibid, 109.

185 Vijay Madavan, Cooking the Indian Way, (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1985), 7.

186 Ibid.

187 H. H. Risley, "The Study of Ethnology in India." The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great

Britain and Ireland 20 (1891), Accessed June 29, 2017. doi:10.2307/2842267.

188 For a more extensive discussion of this, see Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton, eds., The Indo-Aryan

Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History, (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2004).

189 Madavan, Cooking the Indian Way, 9.

190 Ismail Merchant, Ismail Merchant’s Indian Cuisine, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 5.

191 Ibid, 4.

192 Ibid, vii.

193 Ibid, 105.

194 Craig Claiborne, “Food; Currying Flavor,” New York Times, August 31, 1986, Accessed June 29, 2017, http://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/31/magazine/food-currying-flavor.html?pagewanted=all.

195 Yamuna Devi, Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, (New York: Bala Books,

1987), 171.

196 Ibid, 353.

197 Ibid, 103.

198 Ibid, 137.

199 Ibid, xii

200 K.T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 57.

201 Devi, Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, 259.

202 Ibid, 378.

203 Diane Seed, Favorite Indian Food, (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1990), 9.

204 “World Domestic Outlook Database, October 2015,” International Monetary Fund, October 2015,

Accessed May 6, 2016, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=71&pr.y=10&sy=2014&ey=

100

2016&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=534&s=NGDPD%2CNGDPDPC%2CPPPGDP%2C

PPPPC&grp=0&a=

205 “The Military Balance: The Annual Assessment of Global Military Capabilities and Defense

Economics,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, February 9, 2016, Accessed May 6, 2016, https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/military%20balance/issues/the-military-balance-2016-d6c9

206 Tyler Cowen, “The Cookbook Theory of Economics,” Foreign Policy, June 24, 2013, Accessed March

25, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/24/the-cookbook-theory-of-economics/.

207 Brennan, Curries and Bugles, 1.

208 Ibid, 235.

209 Ibid, 159.

210 Seed, Favorite Indian Food, 6.

211 Ibid, 62.

212 Ibid, 17.

213 Ibid, 70.

214 Ibid, 9.

215 Dhershini Govin Winodan, Indian Food Today, (Singapore: Landmark Books, 1990), i.

216 Ibid, ii.

217 Ibid, i.

218 Ibid.

219 Ibid, xi.

220 Julie Sahni, Mogul Microwave: Cooking Indian Food the Modern Way, (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990), vii.

221 Ibid, ix.

222 Ibid, xvi.

223 Ibid, xiii.

224 Ibid, 2.

225 Ibid, 279.

226 Neelam Batra, The Indian Vegetarian, (New York: Macmillin Publishing Company, 1994). 5.

101

227 Ibid, 4.

228 Ibid, 3.

229 Ibid, 1.

230 Ibid, 161.

231 Ibid, 12.

232 Ibid, 32.

233 Ibid, 41.

234 Sandra Sherman, Invention of the Modern Cookbook, (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010),

196.

235 Padmini Mehta, Step by Step Indian Recipes: Tandoori, (New Delhi: Lustre Press, 1995), back cover.

236 Monisha Bharadwaj, The Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and Over 200 Authentic Recipes,

(New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 14.

237 Ibid.

238 Ibid, 15.

239 Ibid.

240 Ibid, 230.

241 Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, (: Raincoast Books,

1996), 1.

242 Ibid, 6.

243 Ibid, 33.

244 Ibid, 63.

245 Sen, Curry, 10.

246 Julie Sahni, Savoring Spices and Herbs: Recipe Secrets of Flavor, Aroma, and Color, (New York:

William Morrow and Company, 1996), xi.

247 Ibid, 56.

248 Ibid.

249 Ibid, 201.

102

250 Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-by Step Cooking: Over 150 Dishes from India and the Far East, including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 8.

251 Ibid, 9.

252 Sen, Food Culture in India, 133.

253 Narayan, “Eating Cultures,” 169.

254 Sen, Feasts and Fasts, 274.

255 Shehzad Husain, Healthy Indian Cooking, (New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1997), i.

256 Ibid, 6.

257 Ibid, 6.

258 Monisha Bharadwaj, Healthy Indian Cooking: Over 100 Recipes for Vitality and Wellness¸ (London:

Carlton Books, 2003), 6.

259 Ibid.

260 Ibid.

261 Ibid, 12.

262 Homi Bhabha, Location of Culture, (New York: Routledge, 1991), 111.

263 Maithily Jagannathan, South Indian Hindu Festivals and Traditions, (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications,

2005), 11.

264 Ibid, 14.

265 Ibid, 13.

266 Ibid, 51.

267 Secularism referring to greater tolerance of religion, not an absence of religion entirely.

268 Monisha Bharadwaj, India’s Vegetarian Cooking, (London: Kyle Books, 2006), 8.

269 Ibid.

270 Ibid, 6.

271 Ibid, 14.

272 Miranda Kennedy, “The Top Chef for Indian Housewives,” Foreign Policy, March 29, 2010, Accessed

July 3, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/03/29/the-top-chef-for-indias-real-housewives/

103

273 Sanjeev Kapoor, How to Cook Indian: More than 5000 Classic Recipes for the Modern Kitchen, (New

York: Stewart, Tarbori & Chang, 2001), 7.

274 Ibid, 228.

275 Ibid, 299.

276 Kennedy, “Top Chef for Indian Housewives,” n.p.

277 Kapoor, How to Cook Indian, 100.

278 Kennedy, ‘Top Chef for Indian Housewives,” n.p.

104

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